After all, they argue, in real-life serpents don't talk. But their rhetoric misses the point.
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In the Selous Game Reserve back in 2005, literally hundreds of miles from pavement (or even the nearest village) one of our trackers suddenly screamed and came back-peddling at near-light speed in our direction.
He'd found a python coiled near a tree.
Being curious, we were of course obliged to investigate ... so we formed a circle as we approached, and sure enough there was the python in the center, with a head the size of a shoe box.
So our guide moved toward its head and called out to me "Joe, grab its tail."
Guess what I did? (hint: I didn't ask What for?)
While our guide distracted the snake's head I came in low from behind and grabbed ... and missed. I grabbed several more times, and despite the onlookers' encouragement, I missed every time.
The discouraging part was that every miss only made the head at the end of that 15-foot body more angry and more upset ... while making me more aware of how the Dar es Salaam newspaper headlines might read the next day if it turned out the snake was more serious and intent than I was about our little game of Tag, I'm Bit.
Glad I don't do that kind of thing every day ... I mean, more than five or ten times ... on a good day.
--
Nobody talked me into doing anything I wasn't willing to do.
Whether eating the fruit or grabbing the tail, choice is the freedom to decide ... and when we think and act as though the boundaries of freedom lie within ourselves, why are we surprised when we end up choosing dumb and grabbing a snake by the tail?
