I hate animals. I can’t stand them. When I say the words out loud, it feels as refreshing as cool-mint breath. And just like brushing my teeth, it is a mostly private habit. So strong an opinion that it becomes fact. I despise animals. And I don’t often let my general contempt for creatures born of this earth known to others.
“You’re crazy,” my roommate once told me in response.
“That’s impossible. Even cute little puppies? How can you be so cruel?” an ex-girlfriend once asked me.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” a pet-friendly neighbor told me upon learning I’ve never owned a pet.
Actually, Mr. Frisco, I know exactly what I’m missing, a fuzzy piss-machine that will drain my bank account and bite me to pieces. I’ve spent practically my entire life avoiding animals and, by extension, pets at all costs.
Let me make a distinction, I am not talking about the human-animal, homo sapiens. Despite some major ups and downs, I still love my fellow man. I’ve flirted with misanthropy on occasion; people come with their own sets of problems. Nevertheless, I can relate to the human condition and feel compassion for humankind’s reasoned mind. What I can’t stand, however, is my fellow man’s almost unconditional adoration for beasts, birds and fish.
When I see Bambi dart out in the middle of High Street, the neighborhood that should be for humans only, a welting frustration pinches my temple. I don’t want to hit it with my car for fear of damaging my car. It’s empty, soulless eyes peer up at me. It looks right at me, I don’t know how, with my high beams surely blinding it.
“Move, you idiot!” I scream to nobody but my steering wheel. I honk and groan. The tick-ridden excuse for a moose slowly patters across the street. I proceed slowly, knowing a Tweedledee will probably have a Tweedledum following closely behind.
“Really, no rush! Some of us don’t have places to be!” I scream from my driver’s side window. I live every day like this.
I hate animals so much that I don’t even eat them. I pledged myself over to vegetarianism almost two years ago and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I feel my stomach squelch in disgust when I see a raw chicken breast or beef patty in the supermarket. There’s nothing I’d rather eat less than something that has spent all its days producing excrement and having sex with other animals. Sex with animals! Why would I put that in my mouth? I much prefer eating broccoli or lentil soup, grown from unfeeling, pure, innocent, radiant, savior-to-mankind plants. Why somebody would ruin a perfectly good lettuce-tomato sandwich with bacon is beyond me.
The truth is that I don’t want to kill animals. I’m not a sociopath, the kind that would microwave a hamster. I just want them gone. I don’t want to see them or hear them or think about them. Animals in an abstract sense are fine (a lifeform doing everything it can to survive and carry on its legacy through breeding is relatable), but in practice I can’t stand them. Friends, when they’d spend the night at my house, would see that I didn’t have any stuffed animals. I instead slept with two large plushies, a can of Hawaiian Punch and Homer Simpson’s head. I am still made fun of for this.
I feel justified in my hatred for my friends’ house pets that ruin my life every day I see them. Whenever I’ve gone to my roommate, Ben’s, house, I see the way he and his family adore their animals. They have three dogs, two cats, a plethora of fish, and a dozen or so chickens. The way they modulate their voices to a baby-talk drivel to call on them makes me cringe. The way they let their dogs jump on them and lick their faces, mere moments after they’d finished licking their genitals, makes me gag. “Farmer Ben,” we used to call him. He and I have been friends since kindergarten. Throughout my childhood, I’ve done all I can to avoid animals but I haven’t always succeeded.
When I used to, reluctantly, sleep over at Ben’s family’s house, I’d call my mother promptly at midnight to pick me up so I wouldn’t have to sleep in a room with a dog or cat. I didn’t trust them. And not without reason, their barking or scratching would keep me up if I tried to sleep. Their dandruff puffed up my eyes and punched my sinuses. And sometimes, I’d be abruptly awoken by a wild animal tongue. This caused whichever zombie nightmare I was having to suddenly become real; on more than one occasion, I shot up screaming in night terror fashion because some pooch wanted see what my nose tasted like.
“Don’t mind them,” he tells me with a nonchalant smirk. How can I not mind them? They’re all I’m thinking about.
This contempt has bled into interactions with all animals. My exposure, though, to every animal is limited. It just so happens that every animal I’ve been in contact with, I hate. This means that my feelings toward animals I’ve never interacted with are completely baseless and closed-minded. If there’s one thing I hate even more than animals, it is ignorance. Is there an animal for me? Jane Goodall’s animal is the monkey; John Quincy Adams had a pet alligator; Steve Irwin loved all kinds of weird animals, though he was ultimately killed by a stingray.
My point is this: If I don’t give animals a shot, I won’t know to what extent I actually do hate them. If I don’t try to find my animal, I won’t know for certain it doesn’t exist. This is the only way I can authentically claim, without a doubt, “I hate animals,” and mean it. No more people questioning it, no more doubters or skeptics. I can get the words tattooed on my forehead if I want. I just need to be certain and then I’ll be happy with my decision.
Cows have always been elusive creatures to me. After living in Pennsylvania my entire life, I’ve seen many cattle peering through barbed wire fencing on the sides of highways. They stand there as I wiz by, spewing fumes in their faces, and they don’t move or react, just stare. I see them mostly as inanimate fixtures of the landscape, like a tree or a “Jesus Saves” billboard.
Pennsylvania is the seventh largest producer of dairy in the country and, as it just so happens, Penn State University, which I live near, happens to be a small hub of milk-producers. “Farmer Ben,” who also goes to school at Penn State, isn’t really a farmer, he’s a nurse. So, after arranging a tour of milking facilities, I wanted to find out what it was actually like to be a farmer. The cursed profession that often requires being around animals.
The Dairy Barns blend in like most academic buildings. They’re out of view from the general student population, located directly off Park Avenue, one of State College’s busiest streets. I meet the co-manager of the Dairy Barns, Nadine Houck, dressed in worn jeans and a Pink’s Barbeque t-shirt; she is going to show me around the entire facility.
“I’m used to giving tours to groups of children,” Nadine says, chuckling through her facemask. “I haven’t given one of these in a while so forgive me if I’m rusty.”
She fell into this position, she tells me. She didn’t necessarily want to work with cows forever, and isn’t even sure that she still wants to do it.
“I do enjoy working with animals,” she says, “but I love seeing the students come through. It’s more about the people for me. The constant revolving door of students is so interesting. I’m not really social outside of work.”
She grew up on a beef farm and always wanted to work with animals, a career path I wouldn’t take even in the worst recession. She does a countless number of jobs here, managing student workers, vaccinating cows, helping the cows give birth, and collecting encyclopedia-levels of data. It’s mostly a mountain of office work, though.
“I don’t spend nearly as much time out in the field anymore,” she says, guiding me.
I hear country music blaring and metal clanging from the milking parlor. Before, I enter the building’s smell latches onto my face. The repugnant sharp smell of domestic animals who don’t care about when or where they move their bowels makes me wince. As I enter, though, the smell becomes sweeter, almost pleasant yet still yucky; like a turd in a big bowl of delicious ice cream.
Nadine is telling me about the impressive number of cows they milk in two hours but I can’t hear her. My eyes widen at the gargantuan size of these animals. Two of them side by side are bigger than the Honda Accord I drove a few minutes prior. Each of the several hundred heifers weighs about 1700lbs. It takes just 520lbs to crush a human skull. There are 500 of them all around me. I’m scared. Cows are susceptible to heat-stress and I think I am too. There are loud fans running in each facility. My head feels light and my body feels small. The colors of the cows are surprisingly accurate, “Wow,” I think, “They look just like cowhide rugs.”
They’re lined up in thin prison cells, tightly ordered head-to-ass. They’re stuck on elevated walkways on either side; their udders are on a near eye-level and twitch when I look at them. The cows huff and groan and stomp, eyes wide, the one in the front sticks its tongue out at me and it wiggles like a seabass. The two burly men, Pete and Jason, dressed in camouflage tank-tops and medical masks barely even notice us when we walk in. They use a series of tubes and hoses to sanitize and moisturize the utters of each cow. These gooey moisturizers consist of the most unnatural shades of yellow and red. The machines have cranks and tendrils that latch onto each cow and suck the milk out. They function like strange contraptions from a Willy Wonka movie. Pete and Jason are the Oompa Loompas. Most of the cows just let it happen, the look in their eyes indicates their complete surrender to the machines sucking the life out of them. I know this because I get the same when I spend hours scrolling through Twitter.
Nadine shows me the ropes of the milk trade. They produce tons of milk every single day and sell it all to Land-O-Lakes (Penn State Creamery, which is apparently its own organization, has to buy it back). She brings me to the barn where the cows do nothing but eat, sleep, shit, and give birth.
“It’s practically impossible for them to overeat,” she tells me. I badly wish the same was true for me. They devour hay all day and sleep in sand all night like it’s their job (because it kind of is). Some of them always sleep in the same stall every day and will fight to stay in a particular spot. One incident involved a cow stealing another’s sand bed, which prompted it to headbutt the other over and over until it left. I’d probably do the same if I found a stranger sleeping in my bed. They have a pecking order and shove each other around. If they shove each other too much, they can get serious injuries. If a cow breaks a leg, they are taken to a vet and are likely put down and sold as beef.
The stench in the expansive barn is what you’d expect from a few hundred cows and their constant shitting. According to Nadine, the cow care-takers clean quite often, but I’ve never seen so much fecal matter in my entire life. These animals also burp at such an alarming rate that the methane produced is affecting our climate. More of them mindlessly look at me and wiggle their tongues. Nadine assures me, though, that they do have distinct personalities.
“It really is funny, some of what they do. There’s one who has figured out how to unlock the gate with its tongue. They all got loose one day and we blamed the students.”
Some of the cows that have gotten loose have traveled as far as a mile. They’ve stood in the middle of busy roads, invaded campus, and eaten from the yards of local residents. Directly across from us is Beaver Stadium, where hundreds of thousands of football fans come every weekend for a few months out of a year. It’s almost disturbing to think of what a bunch of drunk fans and frat guys would do if a cow interrupted their tailgate. Nadine tells me of her favorite cow:
“Everyone’s favorite cow was named Donut. One of our guys would always bring days-old donuts and sometimes they’d feed them to the cows. Donut would always travel to the middle of the barn in search of them. You’d just yell, ‘Donut!’ and she’d come running toward you. The kids loved her and she loved them.”
All of the heifers have assignment number designations. I notice one cow in particular, labeled 2747, that is lying down, massively bloated, and groaning loudly. She’s the cow that’s closest to giving birth right now.
“I can attest,” Nadine says, “a pregnant mother usually has fluid build-up, so that’s why she’s so puffed up. This one is probably gonna give birth in a few hours.”
Each of the five-hundred female cows gives birth about seven times in its life, which is how they keep producing milk. Nadine brings up the fact that they artificially inseminate the cows multiple times, assuring me Penn State isn’t some sex paradise for cows. I’m not sure if I want any children, and I think this makes me more certain. I ask her if it’s as gross as it seems to help a cow give birth.
“You get used to it,” she struggles to find the words, “I’ve been doing this for twenty years and it’s still so cool to see the calves, you know? Circle of life, I guess.”
I am familiar with the ways pets leave this earth. Whether it’s through natural causes like cancer, old age, or a reckless speeding car, parents often tell their children that Nibbles went to live on a farm up state. “That poor farm,” I think after hearing this, “They must have millions of dogs roaming around. The barking must be its own unique hell.” My mother said this about my sister’s goldfish years ago, after my cousin fed it a piece of fried chicken while she was at ballet practice. I was there when they flushed it down the toilet. A sad ending for even sadder existence. If you really love something, its final resting place shouldn’t be the bathroom.
What I am less familiar with is how people acquire pets. It seems that my friends’ animals appear out of thin air.
“Where’d the black cat come from?” I remember asking Ben one time.
“Found him,” was his response. He reached down and petted him. We didn’t discuss it further.
I researched where to acquire a pet by typing “Pet” into Google. Petco was the first and most obvious hit. I’d never been to a place like that and I’ve never owned a pet, so I hopped in my car to fix both of those things.
From the outside, a Petco looks like most larger chain stores, not dissimilar from a Target or Kohls. Large plain concrete walls, mechanical automated doors, and a simple red sign. A woman walks out as I walk in, holding her freshly coned pooch. I leave the calm September day the moment I enter. The echoing whimpering and howling bombards me. I glance over to see a dog on the other side of a glass wall. It stands on a metal slab, strapped in a standing position, shaking horribly. I look up to see the sign “Veterinary Care” hanging above vibrating, crying canine. I think of my own childhood reactions at dentist appointments. I’d quiver with anxiety when they told me I had a tooth in need of pulling. A nurse once cut my gums so badly, I’d bled until the next morning.
Steve Winwood’s 1986 classic “Higher Love” blares over the speakers. Bring me a higher love! Dogs roam freely next to their owners, which would be forbidden in department stores like Sears. Shelves are packed with toys for good boys and treats for good girls.
I wander to the back of the store and an orchestra of crickets and birds guides me to the live pets. Treading carefully, I become frightened. I call my father, another vocal zoophobe.
“What’s up, buddy?” asks my dad.
“You know. Not much, really. I’m at the pet store right now,” I admit as I watch two ferrets in a plastic enclosure wrestling or making love.
“You’re kidding right? I don’t like that one bit. What are you doing there?”
“Well, I’m thinking of buying a pet,” I tell him like it’s a dirty secret.
“I’m going to drive up to State College and punch you right in the face if you’re serious. You’ve lost it,” he says. I look down to see if I called somebody else by mistake. My dad could be characterized as soft-spoken, pretty goofy, but even-headed. I persist.
“I’m doing a kind of social experiment on myself. I’m trying to figure out why I hate animals so much.”
My dad laughs and I laugh nervously. I can’t tell if this is a sarcastic or malicious laugh, I choose to take it as a sign of acceptance.
“What would you think if I got a ferret?” I ask.
“Oh my God. Please don’t get a ferret. One time in college, I hooked up with a girl who had a pet ferret. The first time I went over to her place and got a good whiff of the place and walked right back out,” he told me, in another break from character. He’s never shared anything so weirdly personal like that before. What is the idea of my getting an animal doing to him? Is he just as afraid as I am? Is this his way of leveling with me?
I laugh. “Okay, what do you think about a bird?” I plug my other ear to drown out squawks of parakeets in the cage in front of me.
“Get a bird only if you’re okay with getting up at the ass crack of dawn,” he says. “Does your roommate know about this social experiment of yours?”
“Of course,” I lie.
“Cleaning the cage alone should be enough to dissuade you.”
“You’re right.”
This goes on as we run through every animal at the store. I walk into the reptile aisle. Several lizards stand in a large glass case, all in the exact same position like dolls. They look sharp, too sharp to hold. Lizards are pretty plain, anyways. I can’t settle for the most common pets, the ones I’ve grown to despise.
That’s when I see it. Hidden under a plastic tree and a fake rock is, perhaps, the realest thing I’ve ever seen. A ball python. My stomach sinks. My eyes widen like a gun has been pointed at me. My hands are sweating and my throat clenches as if the snake were already wrapped around my neck. The serpent is curled up and his head peers out at me. It’s about the size of a cinnamon roll and looks like one too. My dad’s speaking to me, but I don’t hear him.
“Dad, I think I need to buy a snake,” my words don’t match my thoughts.
“You’re fucking with me. That thing will kill you. You can’t take care of a snake,” my father tells me and I believe him.
“I need to face my fears, dad,” I say and he believes me.
“Alright. I think you’re crazy but you do what you got to do. Just don’t do anything stupid.”
“Okay, I got to go. I’ll call you later,” I say and hang up.
I back away slowly and turn the corner, looking for the nearest Petco staffer. I round a maze of kibble to find an associate named James, a wide young man who answers my questions timidly. He looks down and back up. He follows me to the reptiles. The snake hasn’t moved.
“Do people buy snakes often from here?” I ask.
“Yeah, they’re surprisingly popular. They make really great pets,” James says.
“Oh really? Do you have one?”
“…No, they scare me to death. I have a dog, though.” Figures. “You need to feed them mice once a week and they’ll live for about thirty years.”
Thirty years? If I died tomorrow, I wouldn’t have lived as long as the average python. If I bought this snake for the long haul, I would be 53-years-old when it finally leaves this Earth. I will probably have been married and divorced by the time I am no longer a “Snake Guy.” And that’s exactly what every person who owns a snake becomes, man or woman, a “Snake Guy.” This is a huge commitment and that, perhaps, scares me most of all.
“So, these snakes are nonlethal, right? Like if I bought it, it wouldn’t attack me?” I ask. Surely, a huge chain like Petco wouldn’t sell something to its customers that could attack you, such a thing comes across as a huge liability. But then again, Walmart still sells firearms.
“No, our pythons are nonlethal.” I breathe a sigh of relief. “But they do bite and might attack you.” Holy fuck.
“Generally speaking, our snakes are really quite tame and when they come out of the shipping containers we get here, we haven’t had any major issues with them,” James tells me.
I suppose this snake, which is only a few months old, is probably not poised to take down a human as large as James in what would constitute a “major issue.” James gives me an informational brochure for the ball python. As an adult, it’ll grow to about 4 or 5 feet long. A size that could easily wrap around my neck a couple of times or swallow me whole (I am a short man), which would certainly be a “major issue.” In its infant slit eyes, I see my life wasting away and evitable demise.
“I think I’ll take it,” I tell him, my hands shaking. “Is it possible to return the snake if I’m not satisfied with my purchase?”
“…Yes,” James says after another pause. “I suppose you can return the snake and the gear too as long as you keep the receipt.” Bingo.
There’s the twisted magic of 21st century capitalism. A twinge in my gut tells me there’s something morally wrong about this. If I proceed, I am effectively renting an animal that is seeking a forever home. While I hate this snake for the simple fact of being, I don’t want it to be treated badly. I decide that it’s alright that I rent this animal from Petco because snakes don’t typically form emotional attachments to their owners like a mammal does. The moral responsibility compels me to treat this animal as best I can while I have it. This will be like an all-expenses-paid vacation for this scaly fiend.
James gets his supervisor who basically does the entire procedure for me. She pulls a cart of thin air, putting inside a large aquatic tank, bags of wood chip flooring, heat lamps, heat pads, and a frozen packaged mouse. I feel as though I’m not a participant in this transaction, like they’re rushing to get this snake off their hands. The manager fearlessly reaches into the tiny habitat, grabbing it like a set of car keys. Seeing it in her hands brings it to life. It flinches and squirms as she quickly puts it in a little to-go baggie which would normally be reserved for restaurant leftovers.
I load the heavy snake-habitat materials into my car and leave the Petco with my new animal and $300 in the hole. I buckle the snake into the back seat so he doesn’t get flung across the car, release himself, and seek his ultimate revenge on me for his capture. As I do this, I see his small head peer through one of the air-holes in the box, and gasp and slam the door shut. I make a pit-stop at the Dollar General to pick up some fake plants and flowers to fill the snake’s new home. I leave it in the car and crack the driver’s side window for it to get some fresh air.
After arriving at my apartment, I lug the twenty gallon tank up the stairs like Sisyphus. It’s certain to me that I will be cleaning up twenty gallons of broken glass and snake pieces by the time I make it all the way across the creaky floorboards. I pant as I rearrange furniture in my bedroom to accommodate my new roommate. The amount of product just to keep this thing alive is overwhelming. It tells me one thing: a python doesn’t belong in Pennsylvania.
The packaging and stickers sit pristine in a white trash bag in the middle of my room. I need to keep everything, down to the staples and plastic wrap, so that I can return all of this junk. The tank is placed next to my futon, balancing on two nightstands. My room has never felt more full. I put the package lunch-box in the terrarium, decorated with a stone slab and cheap fake flowers that a romantic partner would heartily reject. I slowly open the cardboard slits expecting the snake to leap out and latch onto my eyeball. Instead, it sits perfectly still. It’s petrified and won’t leave on its own. I have to tilt the box, easing it out like the last chip in a can of Pringles. I close my eyes, I’m terrified to see it so close to my hand. Its tangled body plops down softly. The lunch-box’s inside is covered in yellow shit. I’m sure I would’ve done the same.
I sit and watch the snake slithering, exploring its enclosure. It hides immediately and I feel safe on the other side of the glass. This is the snake’s room now and I’m just living in it. I decide to name it “Bart” because of the dastardly nature of Bart Simpson from The Simpsons. Also because Bart Simpson scared me as a kid. Its pea-sized eyes peer at me from its coiled body, it looks just as frightened as I am.
“I think he’s really cute,” my girlfriend, Nellie, tells me. Her eager arrival promptly followed Bart’s. She sits on the edge of my futon, her glasses pressed against the habitat. I am hiding behind her.
“Look at his little tongue and peanut head,” she says. The sun is setting out my window and Bart is active, trying to climb out of his prison to look for food. His pale belly smudges the glass. It seems natural Nellie would love Bart; she even has a snake tattoo on her right arm, along with other things that scare me (a ghost, a UFO, etc.). She’s much cooler than me. We’ve been together for over half a year now and I’m happy. She’s kind and loving and I don’t think she’ll hurt me like people in the past have. With romance, I always surrender everything I have to somebody and usually pay for it. But I trust her. I am sweating from Bart’s heat lamps and my own nerves.
“I hate it. What’s the expression about train-wrecks? That you can’t look away?” I ask.
“I think so. I don’t know why you hate him so much, he’s just trying to live his life,” Nellie says.
“It just doesn’t have any limbs or anything! Just wiggles its body around and bites things.”
“You should give him a chance.”
We sit in silence and watch him try to climb to his escape, but his tiny noodle body won’t reach, like watching a baby crawl around the bottom of an empty pool. It feels like National Geographic’s worst show is running on a 24/7 loop in my room. His dark eyes always seem to be watching us. His skin is like canvas, painted with a camouflage of blacks, browns, and beiges. He’s sprawled out and I wonder how he keeps track of every inch of his long body. His muscles move like weak, curling fingers through the wood chip flooring.
Nellie spends the night, as she often does when I’m petrified. She lies still but my legs wrestle wrapped in my sweaty sheets. My entire apartment burns red like a photographer’s dark room. It’s the color of Bart’s nighttime heat lamp and what’s making my room into my personal hell. I peek my head out like prey to see the snake desperately reaching to get out. My heart smolders with the supernatural fear of ghouls and demons from childhood, the kind one gets after watching a scary movie. The devil is with me. The Serpent is in the Garden. That same animal that first tempted humans, burdening us with eternal sin and causing God to be really pissed with us for thousands of years. If we never left the Garden, there’d be no pain or suffering, just unflinching, naked innocence. Who let the Serpent in, anyways? Were they a fool like me?
The next couple of days involve me waking up early to switch Bart’s nighttime lamp to his daytime lamp, replacing the water in his bowl, and checking his humidity levels. His tongue flutters at me when I get close to the glass. As the weather gets crisp in the morning, I notice his temperature and humidity drop. On several occasions, I wake up in a worried panic to make sure he is warm enough (between eighty and ninety degrees). I desperately don’t want this snake to die. “How will I possibly get a refund with a dead snake?” I wonder at first. I plan to buy Nintendo games with the money. After a few days, though, my concerns turn genuine. I’m doing this experiment during a time where everybody is in isolation. Bart is one of only a few living things I see on a daily basis. In my loneliest hours, I tend to Bart.
The weather and humidity change rapidly. Nellie, over again, watches as I put an additional water bowl in, turn on both heating lamps, and put hot wet towels on the top of Bart’s home. I repeatedly burn my hands doing this like a little boy continually touching the stove.
“I hope you don’t suffocate him with those towels,” Nellie says.
“No, this should work to make it humid enough. I was up until 2 a.m. last night watching snake videos on YouTube,” I say, sleeves rolled, “I’m really worried, he hardly moved at all today.”
“That’s because he’s nocturnal.”
“What the fuck. So he just sleeps with his eyes open all day?”
“Yeah, see, he doesn’t have eyelids.” Poor guy.
I like Bart. I really do. He has a tiny baby’s mouth and is really shy. When I put my hand in his house, he stops and wobbles with a timid curiosity. He yawns when he’s sleepy, revealing his hair-like teeth. Ben adores him too and encourages me to drop him off in some Florida swamp to live freely (though I point out that he will immediately be eaten by some larger animal). On one occasion, Bart manages to climb on the temperature and humidity dials and press his nose onto the caged roof, his tongue sticking out. His body is in an “8” shape around the meters. He loves to explore. This is the closest we will be until it’s time to feed him.
It’s been a week since I got Bart and he needs to eat. I bought him on a feeding day, so it’s been two weeks without food (another source of my anxiety). Nellie is over again to help me, emotionally, for when I handle him. I dig around in the freezer, looking for the dead mouse I bought. After this, I will consider throwing out the green beans and popsicles that had the misfortune of being next to the frozen critter. I run the corpse under a hot tap, its wet fur sticking to my fingers. Its eyes are closed and its mouth slightly agape. I very badly want to throw up. I suppose there’s no real difference between this and a piece of chicken, except the mouse has a face. What feels like stone is actually its iced intestines. The things I do for this snake. I feel overwhelming sadness and pity for this mouse. Its only purpose in life is to be food. I place the wet, warm grub inside a Betty Crocker Tupperware and thank God I stopped eating meat.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Fuck,” I say, preparing to handle Bart. I dance around like I need to pee very badly.
“You’ll be fine, he is physically unable to kill you,” Nellie tells me, watching. “Just grab him.”
My hands trembling, I reach into the depths of his world. Bart is crawling around as my fingers wrap around his midsection. His body contorts and wraps around my hand like a bracelet. I feel a heart attack coming on, my muscles weaken. How do Snake Charmers do it?
“Shh..shh..shh…” I whisper to soothe myself. I try to pet him with one shaky finger, he violently flinches and I jump. “Gah! Holy fuck… I feel him constricting.”
Surely he would start eating my hand if he could but he behaves. He’s surprisingly soft, it’s like holding a dying relative’s hand. His eyes, though, are panicked. I feel his breathing and his heart racing almost as much as I feel my own. I have to push him off with my other hand into the Tupperware on my coffee table.
I don’t really know what I was expecting before I watched him eat but what follows is the most horrible, gut-wrenching display I’ve ever seen. Bart eyes down his prey in a stand-off. Everything is still for a moment before his body, like a whip, cracks and brutally attacks the mouse. Nellie, in unison with the container, jumps.
“Jesus, dude, it’s already dead,” I say.
Bart strangles the mouse with his long body while his jaw unhinges at a 180 degree angle. It’s like watching infant murder a corpse. The raw animal side has come out of the relatively complacent and cute snake. It’s head mutates like something bubbling under its skin as it engulfs and gorges on the mouse. I feel bile shooting up the back of my throat. I don’t think I can eat for the next few days.
A flurry of gasps, gags, “Eww”, and “There is no God” come from Nellie and I. I realize now why a serpent was chosen to represent Lucifer by the Bible’s authors. This shit is unholy. Bart’s unhinged jaw slowly and firmly eats the creature. The stink is raw like rotting meat or roadkill. Bart’s head, with the mouse’s defeated head poking out, transcends from his coiled, throbbing body as his monstrous transformation nears its end.
Even as he swallows it, his sinister grin grows. The gigantic lump in his body slides through his tube body and he’s happier than I’ve ever seen. I’m so glad the mouse was dead beforehand, so it didn’t have to suffer this way. I want to cry and I’m furious that I let this horrible beast in my home. Bart will do this to 1560 more mice in its long 30-year lifetime.
I return the snake to Petco immediately. I don’t bother removing any of the gear or repackaging it. I don’t even care about the money. I would be a happy poor man if I never saw a snake again. I would carry the entire back-breaking habitat and the trash bag of receipts back to the store if I had to; luckily, Nellie drove us back. The snake is hidden in fake flowers again.
The manager at the Petco gives me a hard time for “using all the equipment,” so he can’t resell it. Apparently they’ll throw out all it and keep the snake after a brief health exam to make sure I didn’t abuse it. They promise to find it a better home and comfort me by saying “a snake is a big commitment.” Yeah, I know that, and while I’ll no longer have Bart, his decimation of that mouse will scar me for life. The manager grabs Bart with ease and covers him gently in his hands, carrying it off to some back room where I’ll never see him again.
On the drive home, I feel a strange sense of guilt and relief like I’d just snagged the last of the toilet paper from the grocery store. Nellie laments how much she will miss Bart and Ben is pissed at me for not letting him say goodbye. My parents are just surprised it took this long. Bart is out of my life forever, returned to the Petco display room, a place I can’t tell is more like a snake heaven or hell.
I spent most of my childhood indoors. I feel nostalgic for the classic American boyhood I never had. The kids who are kicked out of the house on a summer’s day, a gang of 10-year-old pranksters on bicycles riding down to the train tracks, the misadventures of growing up that form a complex well-rounded adult. My parents and friends celebrate this and I tell myself I wasted my childhood, terrified of what the world had to offer me. I spent years of my young life waiting for the next part of my life to begin. Weeks spent just killing time, anticipating the next birthday or the next grade change. I didn’t know the kids in my neighborhood, too scared to talk to them. This is the same affliction that put me in private school, which is the polite way of saying that I was a bullied and depressed 6-year-old.
I stayed inside and ate Pop-Tarts and played Gameboy while people like Ben played baseball in the street with his neighbors as their dogs ran alongside them like referees. The American childhood typically involves some Lassie or Rin Tin Tin pooch on a black-and-white screen teaching children how to love and care for others, and eventually accept loss. This staple of youth is just one of many that doesn’t hold up the idealized childhood I’ve always wanted.
My parents did their best to ease me into a regular childhood. They brought us to parties, played with us, and took us on trips across the state of Pennsylvania. One trip, when I was about 4-years-old, involved a petting zoo.
At the Lake Tobias Wildlife Park, giraffes, kangaroos, and ostriches live in an unnatural union with rural residents of the south-central Pennsylvania town of Halifax. Baby goats pranced around in a wired enclosure for children to feed and pet. My mom and dad both knew I was allergic to the furry infants but decided it was a good idea to throw me in the deep end, hoping “exposure would make my allergies less extreme.” But they were still newly parents and like most, made it up as they went along. My younger sister immediately gravitated toward them, pigtails in her hair and goat tails in her hand. I was placed in the enclosure and immediately started bawling. Their horns jutted from their heads in ways I’d never seen except in depictions of the devil. Their wide, narrow pupils stared me down as my tears drew their attention. Whether they were curious, scared, or intimidated by my cries, I don’t know. They decided to ram into me anyways. Their headbutts knocked my young hips. I collapsed in the dirt and scraped my elbows as my face contorts from screaming. My sister watched, her love for the goats grew even more. My parents laughed and pulled me from the pen. I had officially created “a scene.” To this day, they claim it as their biggest parenting failure.
For most of my life, I’ve been tremendously uncomfortable and awkward. It became increasingly clear, though, that my ineptitude with animals was even more cataclysmic than my relationships with people. Dogs often raced right toward me when I entered a room, cats glared at me, birds shit on with precision. I’d often be in social situations when I’d have to confront these animals, prompting scrutiny and side-eyes. They’d look at me like a Frankenstein’s monster when hives dot my face like pubescent acne, my eyes swelled shut, mucus oozed from my nose, and I’d hawk to scratch my itchy throat. I was hideous around animals inside and out, they turned me into an antisocial freak. “Oh, you have allergies, right?” friends’ parents asked. “Sorry, we don’t have Benadryl, is it really gonna be a big deal?” I had to be kept separate from the pet that was entertaining a group, or the pet separate from everybody else where it cries and whimpers out for attention. I couldn’t demean myself in the same way, so I isolated.
My parents fought for the opposite. I joined the Boy Scouts of America, in a last-ditch effort to achieve classical boyhood. After a relatively successful season of learning about knot-tying, fire-starting, and badge-earning we had a large cookout at one of the scout’s houses.
It was a Saturday, just as the weather was warming up in the late spring. The scout, Kyle Baughman, was a scrawny, awkward but persistent boy with thick black hair. His mother, who was one of the sweetest women I’ve ever met, organized a scavenger hunt in their expansive backyard. Over a dozen boys, including Ben, and their parents socialized, played games, and ate Costco macaroni salad. I gravitated toward the cookie tray. At the age of eleven, this was the chubbiest I had ever been. All my years of avoiding physical activity was about to cost me. Ms. Baughman knew I was coming so she kept their dogs inside. I didn’t even know they had dogs until she eventually let them out in the backyard while Ben and I were gathering clues on small post-it notes for the next prize.
I was standing under a large wooden stairwell extending from their house on the hill into the pit of the yard. There was a slight breeze and still excitement from the cheery boys.
“Dogs are out!” Ms. Baughman shouted, to the grins of the outdoorsy kids.
I made sure to stay out of the way. The two black blurs gunned down the stairs thumping quickly on each wooden plank. My heart convulsed. They were big Labradors. Very big. They resembled black bears, only faster and louder. They began barking and their blank eyes locked on me, despite my aversion. Like they sensed my fear. They smelled it on me. A deer in headlights. I started backing up; they began slowly and picked up speed, their red collar clattering. I let out a noise like I’d just been gut-punched and started running the other way. Faster than I’d run in years. It took no time for them to get at my heels. Their hot breath on my thighs. I threw the post it note in the air, thinking that’s what they wanted. No good. They wanted me. I didn’t hear any noise besides my own cries for help. I felt their claws dig into my calf, my skin peeling like an orange. I ran faster, but they stuck to me, grunted and huffing. I suddenly couldn’t breathe and stopped for a moment to look back at them. I failed. One of them, snarling, gored the back of my left thigh. It bit down and ripped a chunk of flesh from my body. At first I didn’t feel it. I turned around and started batting them away with my hands. They jumped up on their hind legs and pressed themselves into my torso.
Ms. Baughman ran up and held them back but it was too late. Tears and sweat started streaming down my hot cheeks also as fast as the blood pouring down my leg, pooling in my shoe.
“Oh my God, Ryan, I’m so sorry,” she said. “They never do anything like this.”
“It’s okay,” I said automatically.
I stared down at my leg, whimpering. A sizable piece of my skin was completely gone, devoured by the black Lab. Strips of skin hung off my leg, revealing the pale bloody fat underneath. I was raw, like the slabs of meat in butcher shops. Then the searing pain caught up to me, which didn’t stop for several weeks. What comes afterwards is a blur to me: My dad’s red face, Ben and the boys playing without me, a few “that sucks” apologies, paper towel fibers stuck to my wound, and a swerving trip to the hospital. Perhaps worse than the bloody gash, the attention given to the dogs after the fact. I sat alone while my dad examined the hole of flesh, never feeling more alone.
“Those dogs need to get put the fuck down,” my mom said later in the hospital lobby.
“No, that’s not right,” my sister said. My whole family was there at this point. “They didn’t know what they were doing.”
I sat quietly. The wound beat like a second, darker heart. The staff gave me a bracelet that read “DOG BITE – RISK OF RABIES.” While it was unlikely I had rabies, the idea of foaming at the mouth and biting people terrified me. People who get rabies almost always die. I limped into a hospital bed and some nameless doctor glued the tattered skin of my leg shut. A substance historically made from animals like horses. His gloved hands pinched and sealed the bloody hole. While the pain eventually faded, it was replaced by numbness and a canine-tooth shaped scar.
I came back home, emotionless and drained. Ms. Baughman did call my parents later, asking if we wanted the dogs put down. They said no. I hated those dogs and as much as I wanted to see them dead, I knew that would be the wrong thing. Though, as a 11-year-old, I doubt I’d have much say in the matter. For years, though, I thought people were supposed to put their dog down if it attacks somebody and, therefore, I was essentially sparing their lives.
Dogs have made me upset for many years, this is partially due to their general existence. They have been co-opted by humans as a social tool, like fire or communal living. Turned from wild predators to a genetically modified “man’s best friend.” Dependent bastards, mankind’s favorite beast, every one of them tailored to and loved by their human master. If they’re not entertaining us, they’re supplementing us. Pets, just like the cows at Penn State’s creamery, or snakes that can be bought and returned like a Macy’s sweaty, serve humankind through centuries of evolutionary modification and subordination. And so many animals still adore us and worship us when trained or domesticated. Humans, though, love them almost unconditionally and I resent them for it, and animals love them right back. I don’t want to hate animals as much as I do. Even when they hurt me, they don’t mean it or it’s in their blood. But as much as they can’t help their nature, I can’t help mine and I just have to accept that.