My phobia started to develop when I was very young.
It seems to me I was about ten years old during my first serpent encounter of note. I climbed over the fence and walked through the garden that day. It was a sweltering day, and I even wore my sandals, because the ground was so hot. I wore my nice pink gingham dress, the one with a starched frill all around the hem. |
It was the day my music died. I never spoke of this experience to anyone until quite recently. I thought I had managed to forget about it, but I did think about it many times over the years.
This is probably one of the first deep losses in my life. I wish I had been able to talk about it, but this is the way I learned to deal with the most difficult situations in my life as a child.
I have never returned to piano lessons, but my love for music has not diminished. We learn to accept and compensate.
Snake events followed several times in South Africa. They are plentiful creatures there, of many varieties, with one thing they share in common. Almost all you will meet are venomous.
There was the time a large green mamba slithered into the house through the open front door and wound itself around some surf fishing rods behind the door. It was hastily dispatched to serpent heaven by an experienced maidservant with a hatchet, and was then carried off by a team of Zulu guys. It would be recycled into tribal medicine.
Moving on, a couple of years later. I found an interesting looking soft shelled large egg in the compost pile. It went into my maths' box, to be carried from class to class, as there were signs it was going to hatch.
It did. It was a baby mamba that burst out suddenly, wiggled off my desk and out into the classroom. Everything was a blur after that. Instant chaos. I was severely reprimanded. Those little snakes are venomous from the time they arrive in the world. I still shiver over that memory.
I noticed a lump of something ahead of me on the sidewalk. Filled with childish curiosity, I went closer to examine it, and then my heart almost seemed to stop beating. It is hard to even describe the fear I felt - almost an out-of-body experience.
By this time I was standing far too close to a fearsome puff adder. These venomous snakes are notorious for lying in the path of unsuspecting walkers, and when stepped on, they deliver lethal bites. This one didn't seem to mind the extreme heat. It just lay there, well camouflaged on the concrete.
My distress was added to, as I realized that the crown-of-thorns hedge on my right was rustling with more snake bodies. The puff adder bears live young, just as venomous as an adult snake when they are born.
I was absolutely paralysed with fear for a few moments, then turned and walked back the way I had come. It seemed my legs could barely function. The shock had me feeling numb and frozen. The horror of it all made it impossible for me to talk about it. Over and over I saw the fat, soft looking body of that snake in front of me.
There was no way that I was going to walk that way again.
Ophidiophobia is apparently one of the most common phobias in the world. There are hundreds of thousands of folks who feel the same serpent terror.
Just within this last week I realized one of my friends, in our next door country, is a kindred ophidiophobiac. She had spent a couple of years renovating an old camper she had received as a gift. She planned to use it as an office.
The rains came. The flooding happened. In between showers she decided to clean up the damp floor. She saw what seemed to be a large black slug and cleaned it up with some paper towel. Then there were others, black and white slugs she’d never seen before.
Suddenly reality hit. These were snake droppings! Yup, serpent poop! Neither of us had ever thought that snakes poo, but they do! It was confirmed by a knowledgeable wildlife person. Next logical deduction. If there’s poop in the camper, the pooper is around too! No other signs, but a reasonable question. King snakes are black and white. This poop is black and white. Can you match a snake type by the color of its poop?
After all her work she knew it was not going to happen that she would spend any time in it, except to recover her belongings from it. That would only happen if someone went in it, on the recovery mission with her.
My poor friend had the experience some years ago of walking into the house kitchen, where she noticed something yellow and black had been dropped on the floor. You guessed it!
It was a king snake that slithered under a bookcase, narrowly missing being shot by another snake-dreader. It was a case of do you kill the snake, or destroy a valuable centurion vintage floor? The snake won, after being removed humanely by someone without fear.
One day, between the raised beds I saw a long black, silent shape on the ground. I was transfixed, unable even to move. I waited several minutes, carefully appraising this “creature”. It turned out to be a dried piece of bark. The relief was immense.
Ophidiophobia stress can be helped by changing your country, but as far as I know it isn’t a reason for asylum seekers to use. You see, often phobias are misunderstood unless you’ve experienced that particular one,
When commenting below, you don’t have to use your real name, and your email is never shared with anyone. Do you have a phobia? If so, has it affected your life?
Thanks for reading!