At 3 o’clock in the morning, my friend Sir Boy called to
inform me a snake had gotten trapped in a fisher’s net. Boy wanted to know if I would keep the snake
as a pet. Ryan, our mutual friend, fetched and brought me to
the snake. It was a reticulated python a.k.a. retic, native
to the Philippines and Asia, and at least 5 feet long (immature; adults grow to
more than 10 feet). Pythons are not
venomous.
The net costs thousands of pesos, and the fisher did not
want it cut just to remove the snake. Nobody
had touched the snake before my arrival. The snake would have been difficult to handle if it were not impossibly coiled in the net.
Boy and I tried to disentangle the snake from the
net. The retic never stopped moving,
entrapping itself more in the process.
The fisher and the townspeople were clamoring for the
python’s head. Knives were
shimmering in the moonlight.
I asked Boy for alcohol.
Boy cut a plastic Coke bottle in half and poured alcohol into it. I held the head of the snake and dipped it in
the alcohol until it died, all the while calling it “baby” and asking for
forgiveness. Boy took the snake after
disentanglement, to preserve in formalin and to put on display in school (we
call Boy “Sir Boy” because he is a grade school teacher). I felt bad because I saw the snake as a pet,
and probably because my love for animals is greater than my love for humans – this from
a duly licensed physician of the Republic of the Philippines.
Sir Boy’s neighbor, the fisher, took a while to raise the
money to buy that net. I feel sad that I
chose the livelihood of a fisher over the life of a snake. It seemed like the right thing to do at the
time. I went to the scene to get a
pet. I had no idea I would be performing
serpenticide (or euthanasia depending on how one looks at it).
I could not let the fisher and the spectators cut the retic into pieces. Let the poor serpent rest in peace, not in pieces. I just hope that the option I provided was
humane.
14 August 2014
The incident happened in Barangay Nagbalon in the
Municipality of Marilao in the Province of Bulacan on noted date.
