Surely it's been at least a lifetime since last I wrote. That is not to say that time grinds slowly here. To the contrary I feel the end of my little adventure rushing towards me and I find myself already mourning.
Today I got dumped on while making my way to the village. Between 6:30AM and 9AM it rain
ed nearly two inches. I was on the trail from 7-8:30AM. Almost the entire seven kilometers of trail was a rushing creek. The only exceptions were pools at the lowest points and slippery, bald patches at the highest. In between was all rushing and it sounded beautiful. Walking the trail/creek was like tapping into another dimension, a morphing kaleidoscope of sound.~
I haven’t seen very many snakes this year. (That suits me just fine). But because snakes scare the hell out of me, I think about them all the time. I always imagined that if I did have a run in with one on my home turf it would be while I was:
1. naked or nearly so
2. wearing footwear that offers no protection
3. going to or coming from a bath in the creek.
Yesterday evening it happened just that way.
I was just approaching the rock that slopes into the creek when a tightly coiled fer-de-lance twitched its head at my approach. Generally, I leave snakes alone and they extend me the same courtesy. But this one was coiled up right at my bath tub / kitchen sink / Laundromat. They are reportedly territorial and so am I, so one of us had to go.
Believe it or not, killing vipers is nowhere in the curriculum of Growing up in Brooklyn 101. Truly, I was scared shitless approaching the thing. There was nothing manly about the process. It took multiple trips back and forth between the snake and my carbet, a false start, some fearful tiptoeing and finally a breathless swing of a long stick with the rusty and haggard head of an old hoe rammed on top.
The first blow rendered the thing a snake-a-pelagic but it still managed to heave slowly and flash open its jaws sporadi
cally. The slow writhing and gnashing so creeped me out that I couldn’t relax until the head and not-head were a good 30-40 feet away from each other.This afternoon when I got back from the village I decided to try to skin the thing. It was slippery smooth but lumpy at the same time. I settled down on a rock in the middle of the creek and set about slicing it up the middle with a pair of scissors. Animal pelting is also missing from the Growing up in Brooklyn curriculum, but I’d watched a Brazilian skin an Agouti and Agouti have the added complication of not being completely tubular.
The slit up the middle revealed an amazing interior, practically glowing white and semi- translucent. It had the brilliant, clean look of a fresh filet and I found myself desperate to eat it. Not knowing the rules on viper consumption, I abstained. The organs were all perfect little tubes
within the tube. The whole thing was beautiful. It also happened to pull seamlessly from the skin in one long pull. I admired the interior for a few minutes and then heaved it downstream.The skin was almost perfectly clean. I pulled off a few bits and then washed it in the creek. I remember Crystal telling me about tanning a deer hide the “traditional” way by pissing on it followed by I don’t know what. I supposed urine could work some magic, being sterile and undoubtedly acidic. Then again, it is quickly colonized by bacteria, giving New York’s back alleys their distinctive parfum.
The part of the skin that had been the underside was plated with thick bands like an armadillo, but the rest is so delicate, the skin impossibly fine and silky. I peed on it...for good measure? And there it hangs on my clothesline like the greeting sign at the edge of some small town, “Welcome, you are entering the land of small jungle Jews who kill vipers. Population: 1”
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