!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> Jen's Dirty Thirties

springing into action

2006-03-28 / 10:47 p.m.
when most people think of spring, they think of the trees misting with green, white, and purple. they think about how everything is waking up after winter and becoming pretty all over again. comes in like a lion and out like a lamb sort of shit. tulips n' pansies.

i don't like thinking about the ugliness of life, but it's there and there needs to be the existence of horrifying things in nature because life cannot be completely good OR completely evil. it's a 50/50 mixture, right?

i fed a snake for the first and last time in my life. one of the teachers at work has a corn snake in her room and feeds it (IMO not often enough) mice. the program and training manager came in last week and said, "who wants to feed the snake?" and me, the brave idiot said, "i will, why the heck not?"


it's not as easy as it looks. the mice were in a paper bag. i could hear them in the box within the bag. i could only imagine frightened they were cramped together, not knowing their fate. the top of the snake aquarium has these turn holes that you open and put the mice in. i was warned that the snake is so damn hungry it will attempt to lunge out the hole and grab whatever is opening it. naturally, i didn't want it to be my hand.

so...i tried my best to orchestrate the careful and swift opening of the mouse box and transition of dumping the mouse in the hole. i had to put one in at a time. the mouse got out of the box and i had to catch it and force it down the hole. i felt so bad having to play the grim reaper. i'm glad it's not my full time job.

the snake coiled like a spring and took it out of my hand as i let go of the tail. it twisted itself around the little fellah, and as soon as i saw the blood coming out of the mouse's mouth, i had to turn my head while my male co-workers watched in awe. i find it weird they didn't want to do the feeding, but insisted on watching. i had mouse poop on my hand.

my horror wasn't over. i still had to wait a half an hour to feed the other mouse to the snake. i had the kids with me the second time, because i had been stationed in one of the housing units by then. i told the girls that if they didn't want to watch, they didn't have to, but most of them WANTED to see the mouse fed to the snake! the ones who complained, i explained that snakes weren't vegetarians and had to eat this. i said, "whadda you want me to do, try and feed it a pb&j sandwich, or perhaps a mouse made of tofu?"

the second mouse wasn't any easier. i did attempt to fool the snake by putting the mouse through the other twist hole on the other side of the aquarium. the second mouse ran like the first, and i once again had to grab it by its tail and shove it down the hole. while doing this, i dropped the "f" bomb and said, "go down you little fucker" in front of the kids. i could hear one of the girls gasp. i've never said anything like that before in front of the kids, and i'm sure as you've already caught on, i cannot swear in front of kids in juvenile detention, a rule that i think is really, really, really stupid since 'fuck' is one of the bestest words in the english slang language. i made sure to let my boss know about it so she didn't have to hear about it from one of the kids. i told her that 'fucker' was aimed towards the mouse and not one of the kids. i told her i was ready and prepared for any disciplinary action she needed to give me. she said she wasn't going to do anything and appreciated my honesty.

so---you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have a satiated snake. i've seen my share of life's ugliness before but never in that form. i mean, there isn't any awful thing about having to eat, but i thought about how i eat meat and i'm really no different than that snake. i had fleeting thoughts of vegetarianism, but went "naaah" because i hate the classist aspects of vegetarianism and i just don't like anyone in PETA-(see the PETA entry from last year for more info). the whole thing made me think more deeply about consumerism, and thinking critically is an important part of the human experience.

did i mention that i will NEVER feed a snake again?

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