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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Deliriously dotish anaconda comments

by

20130111

I was over­joyed not sim­ply by the dis­cov­ery of an ana­con­da in the vicin­i­ty of the Ca­roni Swamp re­cent­ly, but the fact that this mag­nif­i­cent crea­ture was able to sur­vive its en­counter with hu­mans. The late Pro­fes­sor Ju­lian Ken­ny told me on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions that it is rare to find this wa­ter-dwelling con­stric­tor at sig­nif­i­cant lengths be­cause they are killed on sight by un­rea­son­ably su­per­sti­tious Tri­nis.

The ana­con­da was the dar­ling of the me­dia for sev­er­al days, at an es­ti­mat­ed 18 feet and an im­pres­sive girth. In neigh­bour­ing Venezuela, it is not un­usu­al for sci­en­tists to stum­ble on­to ana­con­das reach­ing 28 feet or more. Grant­ed, these snakes thrive in a re­gion called the Llanos, a vast grass­land of­ten flood­ed by the Orinoco riv­er. The Ca­roni Swamp spec­i­men be­came the un­wit­ting star at­trac­tion of the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo.

This was a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to have mem­bers of the pub­lic get an in­ti­mate look at a crea­ture they will rarely en­counter. It al­so does not hurt to have brisk tick­et sales at the zoo, which of­ten suf­fers long droughts of pa­tron­age. For the most part, folks seemed gen­uine­ly thrilled that a snake that large could be found here. Then there was one stu­pid re­mark from a ra­dio DJ who sug­gest­ed that the snake ought not to be re­turned to the wild, but killed.

Or­di­nar­i­ly I would not pay much at­ten­tion to the ra­dio sta­tion in ques­tion be­cause it is ob­vi­ous­ly staffed by sub-ed­u­cat­ed troglodytes dragged in from a dirty side­walk. Trou­ble here, though, is that it is a fre­quen­cy that at­tracts a lot of our young lis­ten­ers and as such this thought­less mo­ron in that mo­ment had in­flu­ence over the mal­leable minds out there in ra­dio land.

A ra­dio sta­tion run by dullards is one thing, but the of­fense was com­pound­ed im­mea­sur­ably, and in a place one would least ex­pect. I was di­rect­ed by a friend to an ed­i­to­r­i­al of the News­day news­pa­per that touched on the ana­con­da snake now get­ting top billing at the zoo.

It start­ed in­no­cent­ly enough, then went vi­o­lent­ly off the rails with this: "Should it be re­leased in­to the Ca­roni Swamp or the Nar­i­va Swamp or at what­ev­er point in Trinidad and To­ba­go (To­ba­go?), the ana­con­da be­cause like oth­er mem­bers of the boa fam­i­ly is known to kill its prey by con­stric­tion, may pose a threat par­tic­u­lar­ly to young chil­dren whom it may, un­wit­ting­ly, mes­merise be­fore at­tack­ing."

There are so many things pro­found­ly flawed in that ex­cerpt that I could not pos­si­bly deal with them all this year. I will deal with the most ob­vi­ous: mes­merise? This is a ma­jor na­tion­al pub­li­ca­tion and in the year 2013 some­one sat down and wrote that an ana­con­da would mes­merise a child be­fore at­tack­ing? Is this the basilisk from the Har­ry Pot­ter flick? Should we get Tom Rid­dle on the phone, as this snake ob­vi­ous­ly won't lis­ten to Har­ry's parsel­tongue?

One could al­so come away with the im­pres­sion that the au­thor of this ed­i­to­r­i­al be­lieves that we have cap­tured the last of the ana­con­das liv­ing in Trinidad. In Hans Boos' deeply en­gross­ing The snakes of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the for­mer cu­ra­tor of the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo and this coun­try's fore­most ex­pert on snakes deft­ly mix­es sci­en­tif­ic fact with en­thralling folk­lore.

His book con­tains colour­ful ac­counts culled from the his­tor­i­cal record of en­coun­ters with the ana­con­da or "Huille." Hail­ing from the late 1800s are sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions of the ana­con­da's "mes­meris­ing pow­ers." It was al­so be­lieved that the snake could im­mo­bilise even the strongest man with one whiff of its "tox­ic breath." I am sure Mr Boos would be sur­prised to know that even to­day these deliri­ous­ly dotish per­cep­tions pre­vail.

But wait! It gets worse! "Snakes have been known to at­tack per­sons ca­su­al­ly strolling in their back yards be­cause they (the snakes) feel threat­ened. What would be there to pre­vent the ana­con­da from view­ing an in­di­vid­ual's sud­den en­try in­to, say, its rest­ing place as a hos­tile ac­tion, an in­di­ca­tion of dan­ger. What would be the fate of a hap­less hunter?"

Ok, let's break this one down. I was not aware that there was an epi­dem­ic in this coun­try of peo­ple be­ing chased across their lawns by ram­pag­ing snakes. Cer­tain­ly any ten-minute con­ver­sa­tion with an ex­pert in the field of her­petol­ogy could eas­i­ly rub­bish that re­mark. It has been my per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence that most snakes when en­coun­tered in the bush will flee im­me­di­ate­ly.

I have come across the dread­ed fer-de-lance on two oc­ca­sions and I was nev­er chased through the for­est scream­ing like a ban­shee. Sec­ond­ly, what the hell is a "hap­less hunter"? You mean the same peo­ple who leave the rel­a­tive safe­ty of their homes to go in­to the for­est, the do­main of wildlife, to blow them away with lead shot?

This ed­i­to­r­i­al rep­re­sents a quan­tum leap back­wards in our un­der­stand­ing of the role of wildlife in our en­vi­ron­ment and the im­por­tance of fos­ter­ing har­mo­ny be­tween hu­mans and an­i­mals. I guess we should look out for the next ed­i­to­r­i­al of the News­day ti­tled: "Doh go in dat riv­er gyul, zangee go suck yuh toe!"


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