Ouroboros PARTING

The question left unanswered: Why did Serpent Ouroboros pass up Templeton the Rat? I know all of you were rooting for the rat, but with the healthy new respect for snakes we are gaining, don\’t you think he deserves a HEARTY meal? Our TAIL continues…

I’m HANGING out in the hammock, when a movement catches my eye. There is a field mouse jumping along my wall, come in from the winter cold. With one quick swing of my arm the python is served a sweet snack! Only problem is, snack attack is bouncing all over the tank like a base-jumping maniac, while the serpent sits in utter disregard. The mouse dies of fright or starvation by the end of the day, ignored all the while.


But he is not the only one. Dad\’s most recent project is to eradicate the winter vermin attempting to hibernate in our kitchen. I arrive home to find four field mice bunking with Serpent Ouroboros. We sacrifice their lives for the benefit of another. Or at least that is our intention. I am optimistic despite the fact that Ouroboros has refused food for almost a month now. These guys are a nice little treat, and he’s bound to have an appetite worked up by now! So we wait…


This rowdy bunch not only survives – they begin to thrive! They have made their own private nest: moss stuffed beneath a log. I wake in the middle of the night to find that these acrobatic mice are flyin’ – not dyin’! Their nightly activities include collecting bits of fabric from the blanket that covers the tank. Up-side-down, they do laps by ceiling – MacGyver Mice! It feels like they are burrowing into my brains with their incessant scratching! When day finally breaks there is peace. But now, with Obie on the prowl & silence in the air, I wonder their fates. Ahhh! The silence makes me crazy! I can\’t win! What\’s going to happen next!?


I try not to think about it. When I spy a mouse, I drop in more pistachios.

To top it off, a CAT & MOUSE game has developed. My feline friends carefully monitor rodent activity & avidly paw on the tank’s glass wall. They are just another aspect of the circus that surrounds me daily. I am the ringleader for these little lions.

AT LAST! There is peace tonight. My patience has finally run up and pity set in, so the mice are released to continue their twitterpated ways in the forest. Dispersed into a new log far from here, they remain survivors, living on the god given instinct that sustains them.

In the cycling & recycling of
life – patterns of
aliveness in each segment –
this transition is full of
excitement, passes
the torch, in love.
ADOPTED: AN ENDING
Since my cross country farm escapades, Serpent Ouroboros had to be babysat by a friend. In anticipation of my cross cultural escapades, I search for a permanent adoptive home for my serpent friend. When he returned to me from the baby-ball-python-sitters in October, he was due for some dinner. But the Serpent, Ouroboros, wouldn\’t eat a thing! Lives were spared (as you have read). Templeton appreciated this new state of mind, as did four field mice. After all this, I gave up on feeding and just started trusting that he was fine.

I get a call – someone responding to the ad for adoption I posted at the Pet Pantry. J comes over to check out Ouroboros. He shows up proudly wearing his fire dept gear and I learn that he works alongside a longtime friend of mine from high school. He is also well acquainted with the owners of my part time job! This coincidence paired with J\’s knowledge reassures me that his is the home I have hoped for.

Upon inspecting Serpent Ouroboros, J tells me that he is a male and then extrapolates that most males of sexual maturity stop eating around November for breeding season. Ouroboros must have just come of age, since he ate straight through last year! Oh what a relief to know that Ouroboros is exhibiting perfectly normal behavior (although the fact that I have been through all these gyrations for my own peculiar entertainment is somewhat disturbing!). Wonderment! I am given answers and a resolution at last! The serpent, Ouroboros, is in a safe new home and there are no more mice scratching about my brain as I sleep! Woo-hoo! Cheers!

peace, love and many blessings to my good friend
the serpent, ouroboros

RATS!

FEEDING TIME
Let\’s review Ouroboros\’ dietary concerns during his time with me.
First, we start with fuzzies: tiny mice. He ate about two a week.

The fuzzies are pretty easy to handle. RATS are more substantial. When Ouroboros ate his first RAT, the killing was a sight to behold. Yet somehow, in preserving life, we consume it. In general, we lack experience and understanding of the dying process. That is probably because the topic of death is often silenced rather than discussed. The question I am left with: WHAT IS AN HONORABLE DEATH?
Now we jump to the last RAT that I sacrificed to Ouroboros. It possessed a character more distinct than any dinner I ever encountered! This RAT did not conduct himself like food! For starters, in the time it took to get home from the pet shop, the RAT was popping his head out of a hole he had nibbled in his box! All the others just sit and get scared shit-less (literally).

Ouroboros and the RAT didn’t exactly get a long, however, I would say that they “hit it off” quite nicely. The snake refused to devour the sacrificial rodent, but struck several times, causing the RAT great apprehension. This went on all night. And the next. And the next. At one point I woke to the RAT jumping up and down so fervently that it looked as if he were bouncing back and forth off the ceiling and floor! Ouroboros could have eaten him any time. Instead, there was some sort of stalemate that forced rodent and serpent to coexist.

Eventually I realized that Ouroboros simply would not eat. That’s how the RAT got in my lap. That’s also how the RAT got a name. It was the only thing I could do: LIVE with him! So I had to reach in the tank to rescue Templeton. It’s funny that I was more jumpy about picking up the RAT than handling a snake! Ouroboros had become familiar and friendly, while this finicky fuzzy thing with nails and a long bald tail was jumping up and down – slamming itself against the ceiling in reckless desperation! I understood his anxiety. When I finally reached down to let him up, the RAT and I made immediate friends.

Perched on my shoulder, Templeton was a cuddly neck warmer. He was friendly and the snicker of his whiskers, bubbly. The RAT is always doing something; he looks forever busy with little paws precision preening. Essentially, he is just a little ball of vibrational fluff. He doesn’t bite or scratch, just on with snicker whiskers.

First we went downstairs for cabbage, then for celery. Templeton nestled into the pocket of my sweatshirt, popping his head out of alternating ends while I worked. In time he settled down, poking his head out less and less while warming his nest up more and more, just humming along. Incoming carrot!

Friends came over. They met Templeton and their hearts melded. The next day I got a call. The RAT was given a proper name and home. He goes by Edward Templeton these days. He is a very special RAT.

The SNAKE Room

THE SNAKE ROOM

The beauty of a ball python is not always immediately apparent. That most people have an inherent distaste for snakes fascinates me. My cousins think that spending a night in “the snake room” is a sensational and daring act. Let me clarify. “The snake room” referred to here is actually my room, which poses absolutely no threat to anyone’s safety. It hosts a terrarium (pictured above – this could be considered \”the snake room\”) but there are certainly no serpents roaming free! We all like it that way – even Ouroboros! He is shier than most people think, and the exemplar of gentility. Once you push through the initial discomfort, you gain confidence and learn a greater respect for the snake.

(Cousin\’s caption: the snake whose bedroom we all slept in.)

The following is an excerpt
from Caroline Casey\’s book
Making the Gods Work For You:

THE RETURN OF THE SNAKE GODDESSES

The association of the serpent goddess with Venus is pandemic in the ancient world. Anyone who was anyone in the ancient world was a snake. Everywhere you look, you find one. In southern Borneo, there is the story of Firewoman, wherein eating the snake brings a great deluge and drowns all but one woman. (Why doesn’t she have a comic book?) Lack of respect for serpents followed by floods is an ancient theme.

In Mesoamerica, Xochiquetzal is associated with Venus and the sensual eroticism symbolically with the serpent. “Especially was she honored by women who lived as they pleased, for they say it was Xochiquetzal who taught the goodness of woman’s sensuality and that when a woman felt the pleasures of her body, it brought special joy to Xochiquetzal.” And the prayers say, “From Xochiquetzal’s mouth came words like sweet flowers, from Xochiquetzal’s mouth came words as sharp as the blade of a knife.”…

In Egypt there is Isis; in Greece, Gaia; in Nigeria, Ala; and in Ireland, Brigid – all are goddesses associated with Venus and serpents in the waters. All teach loving compassion and respect for every element of creation. Astarte, like the Babylonian Ishtar, is called the Queen of Heaven, Serpent Lady, and the mother of Semetic people. Throughout the Semetic world she is pictured with the sacred serpent wrapped around her body and emerging from her forehead. She is also associated with the great flood.


Shakti is the serpent of kundalini in India. The Sumerian serpent goddess of wisdom is Numi. In Egypt, Hathor was celebrated in her ancient form as the great serpent. In Japan, Izanami is the ancient mother goddess.

Gaia’s shrines exist across ancient Greece and Crete. Priestesses of Venus were known as sibyls and pythias. The major shrine beneath the Temple of Delphi is associated with the sacred serpent known as the Delphina. The Greek Demeter is pictured with snakes. The earlier name for her daughter Persephone is Proserpina, meaning “first serpent.” The name Eve comes form the Hebrew word chava, which not only means “Mother of All Living Things,” but also “serpent.”


Ancient creation myths everywhere, especially in the Mediterranean, describe trees of life and knowledge, a serpent, a fall, and a flood. Sumerian writings documenting these stories from 2000 B.C. preceded the Bible by a thousand years. Originally there were three characters in the garden story: God, Man, and a serpent deity. How those characters were combined in the mythological narrative determined a culture’s outlook. In narratives predating the Old Testament, the snake was a sacred ally who promised women ease in childbirth. In later mythology, by contrast, Yahweh cursed the woman with pain in childbirth and said that henceforth she and the serpent would be enemies.

With that, the serpent was overthrown as a threat to future Western civilization. Alliegance to one male god of linear progress superseded cyclical regeneration. Wisdom would no longer be gleaned from the Venusian kinship rituals occuring to the rhythm of the solstices and the equinoxes. For the first time in mythological history, men believed in a god who created without a sexual partner. Previously it was understood that both a Venus and a Mars were required.


…Venus in Scorpio defines the task of the millenial artist, as poking holes in realism so that serpentine magic can once more reenter the world through these portals. We can be inspired by the ancient statues in which snakes whisper the secrets of the Underworld into Demeter’s ears (the most famous of which is “The Head of Demeter” in the Terme Museum in Rome). The snaky goddesses invite us all to be possessed by the new-ancient vital Venusian imagery.