Snakes. Why Did It Have To Be Snakes?

 If it talks like a snake, if it slithers on its belly like a snake, if it spits venom like a snake, well that's probably a snake you've got there. 

I listened to my wife paint a happy picture of this lunar new year, The Year of the Snake. She talked about the challenge of shedding a skin, with each little wriggle, every twist. And then she spoke of the renewal this symbolized. I did not interrupt her, because I appreciate that her world is full of glasses half full. In this case, they just happen to be full of snakes. Which seems to be a problem, of some kind. 

So let's get this out of the way at the beginning: Of all God's creatures, snakes probably get the worst rap. Right up there with spiders. No legs. Eight legs. Different from us, so naturally we fear them. We are repelled by them. Often we watch with hunched shoulders as those more enlightened than us handle snakes and spiders like pets. 

Ew.

And maybe we should blame the writers of the Bible. Or Freud. 

But no matter what the source, when I think of snakes, I do not immediately ascribe those attributes in a favorable light if I am speaking of a human being. It is not a difficult stretch to call the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue a snake. The fact that we have, within days of the inauguration of America's First Felon Chief Executive, embarked on The Year of the Snake. Yes, a second term full of draconian, self-serving measures and policies has a ring of "renewal" to it, but not in a good way. 

In some cultures, snakes are depicted as symbols of fertility. I suppose if you stable the inability for women to choose to that, you might have a match for our current day serpent. We have the phrase "snake oil salesman" in our lexicon from another age to describe hucksters who might want to sell you a non-effective cure, or some golden sneakers. Harking back to that Bible thing, there's the snake that shows up in the Garden of Eden, who tempts Eve and ends up getting us all kicked out into the cold, hard world. Somehow this is connected to Free Will, which carries its own irony since it was our country's use of that Free Will to choose the scaly reptile for a repeat performance. Which doesn't feel like renewal as much as a rerun. 

And not a good one.