“Snakes are elegant and graceful. Some have the colors of jungle birds and tropical fish. (Yet, we take) a shotgun approach to them. This is sad and hurts my heart.”
–Terry Vandeventer, “The Snake Man”
The three-foot-long rat snake sprawled across the entrance of the barn like he owned the place. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck tingle. “He’s here for the mice, the rats,” I said to myself. “That’s a good thing; he means no harm to you.”
Thinking he might scare the folks with me, I got a long push broom to shush him away. Old “Mr. No-Shoulders” curled into a striking position as if to say, “How dare you.” He then slithered back toward the daylight.
Most of us fear snakes — my sister Tanner cringes at just the mention of them. It’s an irrational fear. Of the 56 types of snakes native to Mississippi, only six are venomous: the cottonmouth, timber rattler, copperhead, diamondback rattler, pygmy rattler and Eastern coral snake.
Each year about 200 Mississippians are bitten by venomous snakes; about 85 percent of those bites occur when someone is trying to kill or pick up a snake. Alcohol figures in about half of all snakebites — testosterone-induced yahooism, one herpetologist calls it. Death from snakebite is extremely rare (less than 15 per 7,000 nationwide, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health).
The prevailing attitude I encountered growing up was the only good snake was a dead snake, venomous or not. In Mississippi, you were almost duty-bound to kill snakes, be it with a rifle or the vehicle you were driving. That attitude, still common, is changing, though slowly.
Seeking to better understand our reptilian friends and our fear of them, I drove to Jackson to attend Snake Day at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science in early June. About 100 mothers with 200-300 small children had the same idea. The walls of the museum echoed with the sounds of excited children running from exhibit to exhibit. A museum volunteer held a chicken snake for petting; a large white turtle crawled across the floor of the museum’s atrium.
Along with the 20 or so brilliantly colored snakes, each in its own cage, the star of the snake presentation was Terry Vandeventer of Byram. A week later Vandeventer mesmerized about 500 kids at the Columbus Library with his snakes. He estimates he’s spoken to about a million schoolchildren about snakes. “No child left indoors,” is his credo. “He’s a great presenter,” said Columbus Lowndes Public Library Director Erin Busbea, who is working on booking “The Snake Man” for a third Columbus appearance.
The marvelous thing about Vandeventer, other than his encyclopedic knowledge of snakes and his out-sized personality, is his lifelong focus on this single subject (he’s a master knife maker, but that’s another story). He says he’s never been afraid of snakes, not since he found a garter snake when he was four.
He put the snake in a jar and his mother took him to the library to identify it. That was 60 years ago when he was growing up in what he calls the great corn desert of Illinois. For 41 years, Vandeventer ran the reptile house at the Jackson Zoo.
“The snake has never gotten a good shake in Sunday school,” Vandeventer said. “Some fundamentalist religions view the snake as the earthly incarnation of the devil.”
Vandeventer told a Jackson TV reporter that if you see a snake don’t worry about trying to figure out what kind it is or if it’s venomous or not.
“Just take two steps back and walk away, (then) everybody is happy,” he said.
The champion of this little-loved reptile says the object of his obsession has an image problem, one that’s improving.
“We’ve got to get away from this idea that if we’re afraid of something or don’t understand it, we try to kill it,” Vandeventer said.
So, just what are these slithering, cold-blooded creatures good for, you ask.
A Google search turns up plenty of arguments for taking a live-and-let-live approach toward snakes. As mentioned above, they eat mice and rats, which multiply rapidly, carry disease and have been known to chew through wiring. Researchers are studying snake venom for a variety of medical uses including treatment for cancer, diabetes and as a pain killer. A 2013 piece in the Huffington Post cites a study that found timber rattlers eats from 2,500 to 4,500 ticks a year. Ticks carrying Lyme disease can infect humans and their pets. Snakes are even a gardener’s friend; they eat insects and grasshoppers. They are an essential part of the ecosystem.
“I’d like to think that every day that goes by people become more tolerant and accepting of wildlife, the other organisms we share the planet with,” Vandeventer said.
As the evidence shows, it’s in our interest to do so.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.