“How many orphans have to die, Jonny?”

Maddog asks me.

“How many puppies have to be killed before I get another piece from you?”

It’s good to know that some things will never change. It gives us a glimpse of eternity as best we can understand it. It gives us a look at a good long drive. Miles of road, acres of green, years to go. And the satisfaction of the knowledge that it can all be conquered. You can survive anything as long as it’s not lethal.

So I watched two snakes feed yesterday. It’s, well, interesting. Aside from just the mere physiology of a snake working its jaw out of place so it can swallow a mouse whole, it’s interesting. We’re not going to talk about the stunningly quick strike, the surprising strength, nor the obligatory pause before swallowing. We’re not even really concerned with the constriction, because we know that snakes, by their very nature, are constrictors. It’s not as if they’re going to rip you asunder with their massive snake talons, are they?

No, see snakes know that you can survive anything as long as it’s not fatal. They’re patient. They’ll wait for you to die, so they don’t have to fight you in their belly. They’re driven beasts. They’re so efficient they’ve decided they only need one lung. They don’t waste energy chewing their food, and we haven’t even begun on the lidless eyes that allow them to see everything. They’re driven, there can be no doubt and to think; all of this is run by the reptile brain.

It makes you ponder.

This is while I was still in the shop. I hadn’t even had the medicinal after work short yet. The strongest chemical influence I was under was caffeine from the coffee that allowed me to get through yet another day of typical shop madness.

Yet watching two snakes in the same tank is even more interesting still. There’s no camaraderie amongst snakes. The strongest one survives. It’s just a matter of time. Even if it’s as easy as the weak one starves.

It misses the point entirely in that two are better than one. A drive is good, but it’s not that exciting. It’s kinda’ like waiting the next two hours out in the cinema because you already sussed the plot, but still feel the need for your money’s worth. Pointless, really, isn’t it? A bit of patience can be a wonderful thing in those situations. It’ll keep you from feeling cheated.

Now watching the larger, stronger snake constrict itself around one mouse while it swallowed the other is interesting. It did it to hold the second mouse away from the smaller, weaker snake, and prevent it from getting its jaws around the mouse. You could watch it move the mouse away. Even later, when it had swallowed the first mouse and had its head free, you could watch it get its neck in, and watch it whip about the smaller snake and mouse both with ease.

Today I lived an indelibly Irish day. #3 was there for a start. That worked well, because today was one of my two writing days in the week, and Muse is on holiday for the next two weeks.

Now, #3 knows why she is called #3, and will have a laugh at that. She’s also going to have a laugh at this whole Irish/snake thing. For a start, there are no snakes in Ireland. She also sat and watched with me as we fed the smaller snake again tonight after we’d finished her tattoo. #3 also helped the day become more Irish. She came in, sat down; we had a wee yarn, sorted the design out, and got stuck into it. She was the last customer of the day, and I had purposefully booked her in at the end. We nattered all the way through the tattoo, talked about friends come and gone. Irresolvable problems, like Ulster, came up again. We had a wee chat about matters of the spirit, talked, as always, about the family, and laughed at our parting, promising to meet again soon. In her friendship I lived yet another day, with another yesterday, and another tomorrow. Circumstance, more than anything else, put me in Dublin. There’s your physical proof it was an Irish day.

Why do I need proof? Because even Finn asks me the Irish question, and I have to remind him of the tradition in face value and then he remembers that it’s just simply a place where people aren’t quite so caught up in that. The tradition is still what it is, regardless of what it’s become. That’s not such a bad thing. It reminds you of a community, something that snakes don’t have. It makes you want to believe there are no snakes in Ireland.

See, It’s the dichotomies that always give you pause. They allow ponderance to slip in. Two absolute conflicting truths leave you a bit empty, don’t they? Taken as a whole, it can also be one less worry. I mean, fuck it, snakes don’t have team sports. Fuck ‘em, they wouldn’t give two fucks even if they understood the concept. I still need to eat tomorrow, and bothering my hole worrying about the ethics of snakes isn’t really going to put food in my mouth is it?

I mean, after all, snakes don’t even take the time to taste their food, let alone chew it. They certainly don’t waste their time thinking about ethics. They’re driven, after all. I think it was Da Vinci that warned us against the ambitious. If I remember correctly, it was him who said that you would never have a pleasant life around them. What’s the point of a long, straight drive if you don’t look out the window every now and again? You already know where you’re going. May as well enjoy the bigger picture, and that picture doesn’t get any bigger than it is without all the details.

There’s always time to stop, smell the flowers, and wonder how the grass grows before the bullets start flying again. You could be dead within the hour, but you’re not dead yet. That makes life all the more worth living. Snakes don’t seem to get that. They’ve given up a lung and their legs to get themselves to their end goal.

Me? I don’t give a fuck what the sound of one hand clapping is. The end goal isn’t worth anything without a larger story. My dislike of puritans is reflected in my dismissal of snakes. There’s so much more to the world than two mice in your belly, even if it is duck’s rogering corpses.

You can go back and tell your friends and family about it. You have that community. Snakes don’t have that. Snakes still exist, you can’t deny that, but they don’t seem to have too much interest in the larger picture, so fuck ‘em.

The funny part is that I’m still going have to feed them wee bastard beasts again. That, and I’m still fascinated by how they move. Feeling the constrictions as they work their way up your arm is pausing. It’s that fluid dryness that you don’t expect. It just leaves you wondering, how does that hard skin work for you anyway? Especially when you watch it stretch out as they swallow that mouse.

Thank fuck there’s time to watch it in that horrified, looking at a car crash sort of way. It gives you time to look at snakes as they are, driven beasts. The snake in the Garden of Eden? Fuck yeah, he’d be saying to Adam and Eve now, “Fuck the instruction manual, have a go at this yoke. It’ll be deadly.”

Yeah, so they reckon that enough people have been keeping snakes as pets in Ireland for long enough, and that enough snakes have gotten lose, that Ireland is growing it’s own population of native Irish snakes. Kinda’ reminds you of the Celtic Tiger, doesn’t it? I will freely admit that I miss the punt. Any way, snakes, Paddy’s rolling over in whichever grave it is that he’s in, unless he rode to heaven in a flaming chariot just like Ezekiel.

Could be, doesn’t matter, all we know is that there are snakes in Ireland. And they’re so efficiently driven that they feel they only have the need for one lung. Not the sort of creatures I would want to call my friends. I like my friends to have a bit of camaraderie. It makes time spent with them much more pleasant. You get a better laugh anyway. Let’s face it; you can’t expect a creature with only one lung to have a good sense of humour. It takes a lot of air to have a good laugh. That and you need to chew your food, because you really don’t want to choke on it at the end of the day, do you? It would spoil the view that you get from knowing that some things never change.