We frequently walked in the jungle behind the country club where my parents worked as sport teachers. Being teenagers in Venezuela, even few hundreds square meters of ground left undisturbed by developers felt like real jungle, for us to explore. We even discovered a small waterfall, which we descended rappelling down with crossed carabiners once or twice, before we were told that the water was likely to be grey water from the club itself. All the same we believed we were in the wilds. And somehow we were. Once we even killed a rattlesnake.
I am actually writing with LL in mind. She is a cousin of mine starting her career as biologist, closer to the real wild forests in the wonderful border between Brazil and Argentina. As many of us in our starting years, LL is a militant of animal rights and conservation. She would cringe (or worse) at imagining anybody killing a rattlesnake. Why would somebody do such stupid act of destruction? Why would you not walk away, and leave the animal in peace?
I actually have wondered about the same for quite a few years.
I could tell you that in Venezuela there were decent national statistics kept. For a while in the seventies, rattlesnake bite was the second cause of death after heart attack. In basic school curriculum there were procedures for dealing with snake bites, and not only from rattlesnakes. Venezuela counted with two other very poisonous and seriously dangerous kind of snakes, corals and pit snakes. Later on me being outdoorsy, I encountered quite few rattlesnakes, some corals and even some of those, much feared pit vipers, or mapanares. Even later, when we went to climb in the Amazonas area, somebody went to a university lab and acquired few doses of antiofidic serum, to be injected in case of bite. So yes, poisonous snakes were to us like white sharks to australian surfers.
White sharks. Actually when I started diving, back in the eighties, I asked around if I could buy or obtain one of those hand spears provided with an explosive bullet at the tip. What for, asked my parents first and other divers after. To kill sharks like they do in Australia, was my answer. At least in Venezuela I was laughed at. Why would I want to do that? would it not be enough with swimming away? they asked me. In my imagination these people were simply uninformed fools, taking unneeded risks and not helping in the battle of humans against those monsters, the white sharks.
What an idiot I was.
So I should be happy that actually in few decades we have seen a massive change of minds in these matters. From a mere utilitarian viewpoint we have learned and mostly internalized that top predators are responsible to keep ecosystems functioning as we know them. There are successful reintegration programs of big birds, cats and even bears in many countries. And many of us have also realized that animals can have rights in themselves to be animals and have living space, even if it is not in our benefice. So yes, we humans have become better beings.
But I still remember the challenge, and the sheer pleasure of the moment in which we killed that rattlesnake. It felt so cruel now and it felt so heroic then. We were walking in a line in the bush, and one of us almost step on it. Right away two persons went and cut a piece of bamboo, which we used as spear to kill it from a distance. We walked back to the club, carrying the carcass in glory, as some elated Hemingway could have carried a murdered lion back to the camp. To the people that asked or wondered about the whole thing, we said that we had saved the life of other kids walking the place: they would not be killed by the rattlesnake anymore. To my utter and lasting shame today, I even kept the rattle as a trophy, for quite some years at that.
LL and me share a grandfather, whom I met too young to remember him. Tales about his hunting are many, and impressive too. His daughter, my aunt, still treasures a pelt of yaguar that he gave her. His son, my father, remembered their hunting for tapir in the brazilian jungle. I gather a certain heroism in those tales, and also a certain respect of those men for the things they destroyed. I have hunted too, in the sea, spearshooting. I am not so ashamed about it as I am from killing that rattlesnake, yet I am neither proud. Being honest with myself, I remember clearly that I really liked myself being capable of destroy living things, as some sort of powerful god.
I am actually happy that at some moment I realize that I was no god, but a weakling. Anybody can destroy things. To care for them is harder.