Coral Snake

Coral SnakeIn 1985, I moved from a small suburb outside Pittsburgh to South Florida. It turns out, South Florida is a swamp. To live there, people must de-muck the land and build canals for the water to flow into, otherwise, their homes get sucked into the ground. Humans have to fight back Mother Nature at every corner. The heat, the humidity, and the rain are all the perfect ingredients for flamboyant flora and fauna.

In Pittsburgh, I enjoyed the zoo: a healthy distance and cold steel bars separated you from the wild animals who wanted to eat your face off. You can imagine my horror upon seeing my first palmetto bug, “WHAT. . .is THAT?” My first alligator (which was sunning itself on my neighbor’s stoop). My first armadillo (squished on the side of the road). And my first Coral Snake. It took a while (about five years of living in Florida) before I saw you. But I knew who you were immediately. You see, when you move to the swamp, they teach a little rhyme that goes:

Red touch yellow:
kill a fellow.
Red touch black:
alright for Jack.

That means if you see a snake with black and red and yellow bands, it could be a Kingsnake or a Coral Snake. A Kingsnake is not poisonous. You could have it over for frozen yogurt  or play 4-square in your drive way. But a Coral Snake is the Howard Hughes of snakes. In other words, it doesn’t like to be around humans and when you encounter one, you are both TOTALLY FREAKED OUT. The only difference is: the Coral Snake can bite you and deliver a dose of a powerful neurotoxin which can paralyze breathing muscles resulting in respiratory or cardiac failure. BUT: these bites are rare because the Coral Snake hates people, they just want to be left alone to do their own snake thing. BUT: because the bites are rare, production of the anti-venom has ceased. WHAT? You heard me.

BUT: you would literally have to step on one for it to bite you and even then, it has small teeth and has trouble biting through, lets say jeans, so it would have to CHEW on you to get enough venom in your body to kill you. AND THEN it can take like 12 hours for you to see symptoms.
Anyway, I was riding my bike around my gated community, there were only a few houses and mostly undeveloped land and swamp times. I saw one. We were both like, “Oh    ma    gerd,” and bolted outta there. I’m sure that Coral Snake tells the tale of seeing that human person on the sweet blue bike all those years ago with the same terror that I relate this story to you, my dearest Samuel. It. Was. Crazyscary.