Final Draft- James

Sidewinder

He liked to tell people it was his passionate interest because obsession sounded creepy. His passionate interested dominated his thoughts for longer than he could remember. They say you can’t recall anything before the second year of life, yet he had no doubt that at the moment of his conception, as a lonely blastocyst lodged in the depths of his mother’s uterus, his world revolved around herps (reptiles and amphibians). As a toddler, the sun rose and set with sublime dreams of turtles. Glorious turtles whose company he could escape to whenever the world felt too big. He contested his inhumanely early bedtime by lying in bed and forcing his eyes open as long as he could stand. He never made it longer than ten minutes before a red-eared slider would probe its snakelike head out of his underwear drawer, prompting a cascading wave of its tiny green-shelled comrades to surge onto his floor soon to be followed by prehistoric matta-mattas, alligator snappers, leatherbacks, soft-shells, diamond back terrapins... He had surely dozed off.

Soon these scaly apparitions began to encompass the forms of salamanders, newts, frogs, toads, lizards, skinks, crocodilians and, more than the rest, snakes. He found David Attenborough’s narration on “Nature” more mesmerizing than Elmo and even the almighty Power Rangers, a psychological feat for a six year old. But do not be disillusioned into thinking he was smart for his age or had a keen interest in the act of learning because he wasn’t and didn’t. By all accounts he was distinctly and acutely average in all respects save for his passionate interest.

Children are copy machines. Had it not been for our brain prolonging its neonatal stage, acting as a sponge for any form of stimulus well into what most species would consider adult life, our hairy ancestors never would have survived next to the various carnivores that had already staked claim to the African plains. Aware of this ingrained trait, his mother assumed her son was simply copying what he saw on the discovery channel. However, when it did not pass like every other childhood fad as he grew older, she became slightly disturbed by the growing seriousness of his obsession.

She loved her son and regretted putting him in their situation but could not get over her phobia. When Henry was an infant, she realized his father would never be able to fully support the two of them and that he was not the role model she had once envisioned he would be. He had a steady job but worked only enough to get by and had no plans to be more successful in the future. Moving from Arizona to southern California allowed them to be closer to her parents who could take Henry whenever she needed to work overtime. Although she knew it would be a struggle to raise him alone and felt guilty for denying him a father figure, she did not realize that because Henry had never had a father, he did not know what to miss. He was perfectly content with his lifestyle because it was all he had known.

Most parents would be happy to buy their 8 year old a copy of Revision of the Kingsnakes Genus Lampropeltis, ecstatic that he or she would want to read at all, yet in the Zeff household this was just the first step in Henry’s process of attempting to acquire a pet snake. Every time he got his hands on a reptile book, he would read every word cover to cover absorbing every detail. He would then recite them to his mother in a vain attempt to prove he had all the knowledge and responsibility necessary to care for a snake. Over and over he would torment her “but mom all it needs is clean substrate, a twenty gallon terrarium, a water dish and a mouse once a week, you’re lucky I’m not asking for something from the crotalus genus.” Unimpressed when he would try to discuss why the grey-banded kingsnake’s evolutionary path made it an ideal pet, she would always counter with the infallible “they’re gross and I don’t want one in my house” argument. She was glad he wanted to learn, but wished he had chosen a more useful subject.

Up until his freshman year of high school, Henry and his mother lived in two rooms they leased from a kind Korean woman named Malsun. Malsun, now in her sixties, had grown up in the house with her parents and brother but when her parents died and her brother found work in another part of the city, she stayed in the house adopting stray cats. The house was built in 1911 and from the inside it was apparent. The exterior however, was not so obviously ancient. It was run down and overgrown, but next to the low income apartment buildings that also looked as if they had weathered a century, it did not stand out to the common observer. After climbing up the concrete steps riddled with stress fractures to the porch, one is greeted by a small community of flies frantically chasing each other in the oasis of still air created by the low hanging balcony. The front door was far from inviting because of a knob that required a skilled touch to open, gently turning the key one way then the other and applying just the right amount of pressure at the perfect angle, or brute force to slam down the rusty lever meant for a thumb generations ago. Inside, the not so fragrant aroma of dust and cat urine assaulted the nose. The eyes strained to decipher the pattern of leaves and tangerines on wallpaper so faded by the sun it looked more like an ugly shade of greenish brown paint. Despite its poor aesthetics, the house was designed to accommodate more than Malsun and her three cats, allowing Henry and his mother to live comfortably for cheap.

After school Henry would spend his afternoons in the backyard chasing stray cats and turning over rocks. Under each rock he would discover a new ecosystem, centipedes and spiders hunting louses and various tiny beetles, slugs and earthworms lazily grazing the dirt. After dark he would try to entice Malsun’s cats by dangling a piece of string in front of them though they only responded by arrogantly turning away, tail straight in the air as if flashing their tiny pinpoint anus as an insult for bothering them. One cat had some sort of cancer and was given a warm bath by Malsun every night, another was too old to move from its pillow next to the window, and the other he was told had two extra toes on its front paws yet it was so secretive, Henry began to think it didn’t exist. The cats were boring and he had seen every species of insect his small backyard had to offer. He still longed for reptiles.

The summer after third grade finally gave him the feeling of being a whole person because it marked the first time he convinced his mother to buy him a kingsnake. Finding the glass terrarium in his room when he awoke on his birthday was the happiest moment of his life. The snake inside was more beautiful than he had imagined and the gray and orange bands that wrapped around the length of its body were more vivid and bright than any of the photographs in his book collection. When he slid the wire mesh screen toward his body and placed it next to the terrarium, a warm rush filled his body and his stomach bubbled in the most satisfying way. His hand shaking from excitement, he slowly reached inside the cage and as gently as he could allowed the tiny gray worm of a snake to slide through his fingers. As he removed his arm from the cage the snake’s soft coils became tighter as it sensed that it was being lifted. It was so perfect and gorgeous. He pulled it in close to his face to get a better look and was overwhelmed as if he would burst into tears any second. His chest strained and he began to shake more violently. The sensation in his chest moved into his throat and without meaning to, Henry let out a high- pitched scream that quickly turned into a series of victorious shrieks. Alerted by the unusual monkey sounds coming from the next room, his mother walked to his doorway expecting a gracious thank you for giving in at last, but she did not expect that her son was already holding the disgusting gift she had just given him. Henry jumped to embrace his mother, kingsnake in hand, causing her to withdraw from the room and screech at the miniscule menace of a reptile shouting “Your welcome! Your welcome!” as Henry continued his advance.

In the following weeks, Henry devoted all of his free time to learning as much as he could about his new pet and spent countless hours rearranging and beautifying its terrarium until it looked like an exhibit of a desert habitat at the Natural History Museum. He already knew enough to qualify as director of the reptile house at the Los Angeles Zoo but every trip to the library offered new books and new facts. All other aspects of his life lost significance, especially his schoolwork. Henry found it much more desirable to draw tuataras and spitting cobras than focus on the intricacies of long division. His obsession controlled his thoughts for the rest of elementary school and by the time he was fourteen, he had found a job at an aquarium store within walking distance of his house. His mother mistakenly thought she had quelled her son’s desire to own reptiles when she bought him a hatchling king snake, yet as soon as he had money to spend, Henry acquired as many new pets as his meager earnings allowed. Soon his mother couldn’t look in his room without making eye contact with a gecko or python.

His mother reminded him of how displeased she was with his academic performance almost daily. She knew how intelligent he was and felt he was wasting his time focusing on something unconstructive toward a lucrative career. She was under the strong impression that it was nearly impossible to make a living as a herpetologist and it didn’t help his argument when Henry proposed the idea of milking deadly snakes of their venom and selling it to hospitals to synthesize antivenin. It was the kind of job only the most devoted or insane herpetologists took and it only becomes profitable if the scientist milks several hundred snakes a month. The process involves gently holding the snake just behind its jaws and forcing it to bite through a thin piece of rubber covering a plastic or glass vessel. The scientist then has to gingerly push the snake’s venom glands, forcing out more venom into the container. Next the scientist must remove the snake and safely put it back into its enclosure. With many fast moving highly aggressive species like the inland taipan or the black mamba, performing this task wouldn’t be far from attempting suicide.

On his sixteenth birthday Henry passed his driving exam. He was very adamant about getting his permit the day he turned fifteen and a half so that he could get his license the day of his birthday. He couldn’t pay for anything that wouldn’t cost twice as much in repairs after a week of driving and knew he wouldn’t get a car from his mother unless he had a license. He figured his best chance would be on his birthday. Leading up to the date, his mother avoided the subject as much as possible because she did not have the money to afford anything much nicer than a ’79 Ford Pinto, the so-called “barbeque that seats four”, aptly named for its explosive tendencies resulting from a rear gas tank that could be easily punctured even in minor rear-end collisions. Driving in LA is dangerous even if your car isn’t a deathtrap.

Disappointed but understanding, Henry made a deal with his mother that allowed him to borrow her ‘89 Camry on the weekends and ride the bus during the week which was more than most sixteen years olds could hope for. When she handed over the keys that Saturday morning for the first time, apprehensive to say the least, Henry was ecstatic about driving by himself and more excited about what he had had in mind since he received his permit. After years of keeping various constricting snakes of nearly every genus, Henry felt it time to explore keeping his favorite species, the crotalus cerastes, also described as the horned rattlesnake or sidewinder. After months of research, Henry favored this species most for its small size because his main concern was keeping the animal hidden from his mother. It would stay under two feet, small enough to comfortably live in a terrarium just short enough to squeeze under Henry’s bed, and its rattle was much more quiet than the snake’s larger cousins. Though it was highly unlikely because of her innate fear of her son’s beloved pets, the last thing Henry wanted was for his mother to walk into his room when he wasn’t around and hear the telltale rattling radiating from under his bed. If she felt uneasy just looking at his three-inch leaf-tail gecko, she would surely go into shock if she found herself in the same room as a rattlesnake.

That morning, keys in hand, Henry snuck his plastic critter keeper and snake hook, which was really just a clothes hanger bent into shape with duct tape as a handle, into the trunk of his mother’s car and drove straight to his closest friends house. Keith didn’t share the same interest in reptiles but still found them strange and mysterious. More than the animals, Keith was fascinated by Henry’s peculiar obsession and loved how different and genuine he was. Henry knew what he liked and pursued it completely and absolutely, something Keith thought was a rare quality among his other classmates. He didn’t know anything about them beyond what Henry told him and was one of the few people in Henry’s class who could tolerate hours of discussing the plethora of gruesome ailments that followed the bite of a puff adder, a stocky pit viper with strong hemotoxic venom known for rotting away the appendages of its victims.

“Hey man, I’m outside.”

“Alright, one sec, should I bring anything? I rolled up a couple fatties this morning”

“Eh, I’m good, gotta be on my game but you should if you already rolled em.”

A moment later Keith was locking his front door and flopping into the passenger seat. Their classmates knew Keith as the typical philosophical stoner type who commonly discussed world politics he knew little about. He usually smoked at least twice a day and although Henry rarely participated he didn’t mind discussing the injustices of the monetary system and the psychological benefits of taking LSD with Keith because they talked just as much about salamanders.

“Nice ride.”

“Hah, yeah right, this piece gets to sixty in like fifteen seconds. She said I need to have it back by nine so we’ll only have like an hour or so in the desert to actually look around. That’s if the traffic is light.”

“Glad I brought something for the ride then.”

“Yeah just don’t fucking light up if we’re in traffic, it’s my first time with the car and I’d get my ass kicked if she knew I was smoking at all.”

“I thought you didn’t want any?”

“I don’t, but that won’t matter if it’s in the car and I get caught.”

“Ey if we get pulled I’d be more worried about them finding that fucking snake you want to find, at least I have a club card so its kindve legal.”

“Whatever it’s pretty impossible to mess around with this shit kicker, barely hits the speed limit anyway.”

It took almost four hours to get to the area Henry knew was the best habitat for sidewinders and the most secluded from the main highway. They had been driving along a dirt road that looked as though it hadn’t been used in decades for almost thirty minutes before the car’s suspension started to sound like it was disintegrating. If he were caught collecting wild animals, especially a rattlesnake, he would be arrested and fined more than he and his mother could afford. When he pulled over to an especially sandy area prime for sidewinders, the sun had started to descend. It was the perfect time for collecting as the snakes had just begun to emerge from their burrows to hunt kangaroo mice.

“Holy shit its hot, I’m gonna bake.”

“Too late.”

“Very funny. That joint wore off a while ago and it’s way too fucking hot to be hiking around without water.”

“Yeah if I’d known gas would be so much I’d have brought water from home. It’s the perfect time to look around and from what I’ve read about this place, it shouldn’t take long to find one.”

“Hope that crappy little cage doesn’t roll over or something in the car. I’m hitch hiking if that thing gets out dude.”

“Don’t worry it can’t get out.”

After searching through bushes and under rocks for fifteen minutes Henry found a desert hairy tarantula that Keith thought was especially “fucking gnarly”.

“It’s a desert hairy. Pretty common in this area, I’m surprised this ones so tame.”

“You’re crazy man, I’d never pick that shit up.”

“Eh, its pretty harmless. Its venom is only potent enough to kill animals around its size.”

“Lemme get a good look at that sucker’s fangs dude.”

Henry held the spider up close to their faces to examine its menacing black fangs that twitched independently as the spider crawled along the palm of Henry’s hand.

“Dude, lets get it high.”

“What? I don’t even think they have brains capable of getting high.”

“Who cares, let’s try. I have one more anyway.”

“I don’t think it’ll do anything except maybe make it more passive, smoke does that to bees.”

“Heh, course it does.”

Keith lit another one of the joints he had rolled for the car ride and took in as much smoke as his smoker’s lungs could hold. When he thought he had enough, he exhaled it all onto the increasingly stressing spider Henry was struggling to keep on his hand. Keith thought it was hilarious, jerking his head back laughing. The quick motion and abrupt cacophony created by Keith’s laughter combined with the spider’s struggle to escape prompted it to scrape its back legs against its abdomen, releasing thousands of its tiny hairs into the air. Henry immediately felt the irritating hair invading his throat, nostrils and eyes. He quickly dropped the spider and coughed up as many of the hairs as he could.

“Are you okay man?”

“Yeah it’s fine, the spider just shot a bunch of its hairs down my throat and I can’t really see.”

“The spider did that?”

“It’s a defense mechanism, it must’ve gotten scared by the smoke or something. At least it was a small one, I’ve heard of people choking to death from the hairs.”

“That’s nasty man, sorry we don’t have any water.”

“I’ll live, it’s just really bothering my eyes.”

After the spider’s escape, Henry resumed his search for sidewinders while Keith finished the joint. Without water to wash his eyes, Henry’s vision was blurry and the more he rubbed his eyes, the more they became irritated. He was struggling to distinguish objects on the ground in front of him and became unsure of his ability to spot a well-camouflaged sidewinder, let alone handle one. As the two walked through the maze of desert shrubs, Henry explained to Keith that the myth of how smaller venomous snakes are more dangerous than large venomous snakes is entirely false. As he described the phenomena of “dry bites” in great detail, they both heard a quiet rattle emanating from a small bush to their left.

“Hell yes, definitely a sidewinder.”

“Finally, now we can get the fuck out of here.”

“Alright I’ll just get him in the cage and we can go.”

Henry struggled to contain his excitement but Keith was getting anxious and he would already be late returning the car to his mother. He didn’t want to have to explain where he had been. It would be obvious what he was up to. The snake was quicker than he expected and its means of locomotion for which the sidewinder is famous for in which it ungulates different sections of its body sideways along the sand only made it more difficult to contain. It didn’t help that he had to rub his eyes to see it clearly. When he finally managed to get the top of the “critter keeper” open and the snake close enough, Henry picked up the snake with the hook and gently lowered it into the small plastic cage. It had been rattling since they first heard it and didn’t cease once it was in the cage. By now it was very agitated. The snake was a juvenile, only around ten inches, but it was already almost twice the length of the cage easily three times the length of the cage’s height. As he snapped the plastic lid shut, the snake struck. Henry could hear the snake’s head colliding with the plastic lid and instantaneously felt pain shoot through his index finger. One of its fangs had pricked him through the tiny air holes in the top of the cage.

“Oh shit, oh my god man, it bit me, I don’t know how it could’ve happened but it bit me.”

“Oh fuck, are you sure? It was in the cage, how could it have gotten you?”

“I don’t know but I can feel it, it barely pricked me but I can feel it all the way up my arm, fuck we’re so far away from anything man. Shit, oh my god, I’m going to lose this hand.”

Henry sat on his knees close to tears squeezing as much blood as he could out of the tiny pin prick on the end of his finger.

“Fuck what do we do?!”

“I have to get to a hospital now, we need to get to the car, call 911 and ask for the nearest hospital.”

Henry opened the cage and tossed it into the bushes. The pair hurried in the direction of the car that was now an hour’s walk away.

“I don’t have service in this shit-hole, give me your phone.”

Henry looked at his phone and saw the symbol of a red X over a phone.

“Neither do I, fuck it we need to get back on the road.”

By the time the car was in sight, Henry’s entire arm had swollen. The skin around his index finger had turned nearly black and was close to tearing open from the swelling. Henry’s fear and the brisk walk to the car expedited the venom’s effect. When he finally sat down in the driver’s seat, his eyes felt heavy and the left side of his body barely responded. He pushed the key into the ignition but his left leg was too weak and shaky to push down the clutch that should have been replaced months ago. He forced it down as far as he could but the more he pushed the harder his heart pumped, forcing the venom throughout his entire body making it harder for him to think coherently. His mouth was dry and a metallic taste occupied the back of his throat signaling that the venom had fully circulated. Dehydrated from the walk and nearly blind from the venom and tarantula hairs, Henry could barely distinguish the dashboard of the car from the road ahead. His head was bobbing from side to side and he knew the situation was dire when he no longer felt adrenaline.

“Hurry up man, what the fuck are you waiting for?”

“I can’t even push in the clutch man and I can’t see shit. You have to drive”

“I don’t know how to drive stick.”