The document describes the author's childhood experiences with snakes in the forest reserve near their home. As a baby, the author witnessed a massive snake being killed. As a teenager, the author encountered an extremely long snake stretching across the entire driveway. The author also found snake eggs in a landslip and brought them home, though later returned the unhatched eggs. The author went on nature trips with neighbors where they encountered horsewhip snakes but were never attacked.

1. Forest Reserve where I spent several years of my childhood did indeed have many snakes
since it was an oilfield placed in the middle of a forest which was cleared only for the nec-
essary housing and equipment instillations. In that environment snakes were usually left
alone to continue their journey and there were no stories from adults told to me about their
character, so I had no negative feelings towards them or most other animals.
My first memory of snakes was of a massive one killed when I was a baby. As a teenager a
neighbour of mine confirmed that it was very large and that he had helped kill it. In another
episode I crossed over one walking home from the bus-stop after school.
Hearing the cries of my siblings I crossed over it again to
find out what they were agitated about. I had not seen the
head nor the tail because it was so long it stretched across
the entire driveway. It stretched over part of a lawn, the
right hand drain, a two car driveway, the left hand drain
and a piece of the lawn on the other side.

2. It stayed in the garden for another few hours digesting the bulge in its stomach before mov-
ing on. I assumed that a shallow earthquake had opened a crack in the ground that stretched
across that whole distance. It was only when my siblings called out "snake" that I saw it for
what it was. I stepped over it a third time to get into the house but my siblings may have
detoured around it.
In another case a small landslip close to my house exposed some eggs which I took home
and put in a box in my room. A few weeks later I went outside to see four small snakes
hanging from the clothesline, and they stayed there for about an hour. I decided to put the
un-hatched eggs back, even though I did not know what kind of eggs they were; but my
main concern was whether they would still hatch after I had disturbed them twice.

3. My brother and I often went into the forest with three brothers from a neighbouring fam-
ily to look for things that they wanted, such as sucker fish ‘mamatetas’ (Hypostomus
plecostomus) for their aquariums and specific butterflies for my brother’s collection. On
these nature trips the snakes that we encountered the most often were ‘horsewhips’
Oxybelis aeneus, we were never attacked, nor did we kill them.
.

4. For my doctorate I conducted participatory research with hunters (Lans et al., 2001). They
did not have any excuse for killing snakes except that they did not see why they should let
them live. After several months when they knew me better they acknowledged that they
had never been harmed and had no justification. Apparently they called me the witch lady
because I led the way back to the camp on the first trip even though I had never been there
before or even in that Guayaguayare forest before. To me the paths were obvious and I
assumed they would stop me if I was on the wrong path.
BMC Complementary and Alternative Medi-
cine - BioMed Central
www. biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6882-1-10.pdf
C Lans - 2001 - Cited by 61
Hunter’s camp

5. Approx location of snake, Photos: Paul Wittet, Dilys Celestine
at base of hill
Approx location of bus stop
School, couple of miles
away
Approximation of snake