It has taken me a lifetime to recover from my learned and taught aversion to snakes. As a conservation commissioner (or just at home in my garden) people always knew I’d been startled by a snake from the high pitched squeal I emitted. My kids — one now a field naturalist — laughed at me.
The way they move just gave me the creeps. I’ve still never held one and find it hard to pick up a snake skin with my bare hands, so I always wear gloves in the garden.
I have vivid memories when I was about 6 and growing up in Michigan, of my otherwise nature-knowledgeable father and uncle stalking off in a chase of a blue racer coming back triumphant with a very long, very dead animal. They felt they had saved us from an ominous predator — a six-foot monster that for some reason failed to find a place to hide.
Much later I learned that blue racers aren’t venomous and though they vibrate their tails and make a buzzing sound when threatened, a bite might be painful, but not life-threatening. They just want to be left alone. They resent human intrusion — I sometimes share that resentment and still feel sorry for that snake and the ignorance that led to its death. Years later, mowing my lawn, I killed a beautiful little smooth green snake and have had snakes that hung out in the wall next to my kitchen door enter the foundation of my house and fry themselves in a light fixture.
I felt terrible about these things — even though seeing them wind their way across the grass or floor still gives me pause. I haven’t unlearned all the early fears I was taught, but I’m able to be rational now.
So, I understand why folks here in the western part of the state resent what seems to be a Boston intrusion into their prerogatives, but OK, now that the point has been made, let’s be clear: the science is sound and so is the plan to reintroduce rattlesnakes to an appropriate habitat.
Besides, people aren’t supposed to be on that island in the Quabbin Reservoir anyway and the chance of the rattlers leaving are pretty much zero to none. This project should go forward as planned — and soon.
I have learned to control my shudders and squeals and have learned something about snakes and their needs and habits over the years. I suggest that others do the same, because if I’m not afraid to have rattlesnakes in the Quabbin, no one else who pays attention to facts rather than fears should be either.
Judith Eiseman lives in Pelham.
