Me? A specieist? Ageist?

I had an interesting moment yesterday. On a mental health vacation, headed to the yard to tend to it's much needed grass length. As I was cleaning up after my snorty dogs, I came across a rather large for it's variety, garden snake. After the squealing and failed attempts at my dogs to get it (Emma literally almost stepped on it a number of times, she's got beauty not brains), I conceded to the result that I am going to have to get this sucker out of the way myself.

Lucky for me the extreme amount of wind recently had blown a number of long branches out of my tree, perfect for snake wrangling. I took a deep breath and began to poke the snake. No reaction. Oh shit. This fucker is dead. great. i'm probably gonna drop it on my foot or get some snake guts on my hand trying to get this thing out of here. awesome.

On a sidenote, I have cleaned up grodier dead critters from my yard. A couple of houses ago, I had to rake a dead squirrel on to a snow shovel while my dad laughed at me on the phone AND it's squirrel friend threatened me from a low hanging branch. In case you are wondering, dead squirrels smell terrible. None the less, it was a pretty tense situation.

Back to the snake. I prodded it a few more times and eventually got this guy going, big and heavy, slow moving and not threatened by me at all just, I think, more agitated that I woke it from it's afternoon cinco de siesta. Snake bro got a bit out of the way, but I had to mow my grass and we had seemed to reach a stale mate so, I resorted to using my branch hand to scoop up this easily two foot long garden snake and gently place him in the area behind my shed. Mission accomplished. I gave it the "I have my eyes on you" gesture and continued on my pre-mow cleaning.

I get the mower out. Check on duderson, OH GOD. IT'S GONE! oh wait, there it goes slowly slithering out of the yard toward the alley.

now the "guilt" sets in. I start to feel badly about how I treated the snake. Poking it with a stick, trying to get my dogs to do my dirty work...etc. I felt a little awful that just because it is a creature that I don't necessarily prefer or have an aversion to doesn't afford me the right to be cruel to it.

I began to run over scenarios in my head about how the snake was older due to the slow movements and size or maybe full from eating spiders and things. I actually felt BAD. This translation of having loving kindness or compassion for all things is ALL yoga. Brief and shining glimmers of a decent person under all of these layers of preconditioning give me bits of hope. Wow, maybe I am all of the things some people tell me I am. It's the difference between wishing it and living it.

All from an encounter with a garden snake.