It’s No Wonder Our World Is In Trouble

Once upon a time, people went out of their way to be considerate to others. No? Well, that’s the way I remember it.

Long before social media, if you had a conversation, it was either on the phone or face to face, and you couldn’t really say things hiding behind a cloud of anonymity and a keyboard.

Those days are sadly gone forever, unless something cataclysmic happens and our world meets a disaster like we have never seen before.

Of course, if you follow politics, you know how possible this is right now. Let’s go ahead and take the framework of politics completely out of it and just say if you’re paying attention to current events, it could get real at any given moment.

But I’m not trying to delve into that topic yet.

Right now, I just want to briefly talk about the internet and how horrific it’s become and how much worse it has the potential to be.

I have an acquaintance who posted about an event in her life. It was a significant occurrence. Let’s just say she made a mistake of epic proportions, and it could have ended in tragedy.  As it turns out, a trip to the hospital and some anti-venom is probably going to take care of the problem.

Several people commented on her post in concern and sympathy, and I also made a comment, not realizing the post had been shared to various snake handling pages and was now considered “viral.” Of course, this means that hundreds of random strangers were interacting with my friend’s page and each other, and offering their reactions, opinions, and advice.

In my naïve little bubble, I just went right ahead and posted my “normal for me” comment, which met with backlash from a few random strangers who esteem serpents as higher creatures than man.

Or whatever. Snake lovers.

It’s fine. You can love who or what you want to love. I don’t care. But I’m still going to take care of one if I see one in the way I take care of snakes. I don’t mean to cause the eco-system harm or even harm an innocent creature. But I’m going to kill a snake and no, I’m not worried about what anyone will say about it. I’m not worried about whether that dead snake is going to jump up and bite me. I’m not worried about anything, because if I see it before it sees me, I’m going to kill it.

If a wasp stings me, I’m going to take the wasp out, along with his entire family and community. It’s called common sense, and survival of the fittest. It’s called smart and human instinct. It’s called none of your business.

If you want to live with a nest of wasps and pit vipers, you go right ahead. Fine with me. But I’m gonna take a mother out.

I’m not evil.

In fact, traditionally, it’s a snake who is evil. I read the Bible. I know about the Garden of Eden. And don’t we fall back on the word “snake” to describe someone who does us wrong?

People who live in a fear-based mindset say, “The best thing to do is to step back and evaluate your situation. Do not go near the snake because he might strike you.”

….

This is exactly why I will take care of him before he takes care of me!

The cyber bullies/trolls thought they would get the upper hand with me. I must sound as country through my keyboard as I do in person.

Some random person told me he “can’t wait til a snake that you are trying to kill retaliates and bites you.”

Well. That little bit of wisdom applied to my life means something. Applied to an actual snake means nothing because there is no TRY. There is only DO.

Another man told me, “You look like a trashy, withered husk of a human and your inside matches your outside.”

NICE.

What I said back was, “Trolls don’t bother me, Satan.”

What I meant to say was, “Boy, step back! I worked at the Office of Motor Vehicles for a quarter of a century. You can’t hurt my feelings, nor can you win an insult war with me!”

I can be scathing but I loathe confrontation with total strangers over snakes (or anything else, for that matter). Anyone who has a problem with me and the way I deal with the occasional snake can just slither away into oblivion. I don’t care.

However, I’m a nice person.

For the ones who came at me with educational comments, I ate that up. I was surprised to find out that a rattlesnake can still bite you when his head is detached from his body. A veterinarian with a fantastic name sent info and talked to me human to human even though we were on different sides of the snake fence.

People don’t have to agree to get along and have mutual respect. Where did that idea even come from? Why can’t we be different? What makes me wrong just because I’m not afraid of snakes and because I believe they should be dealt with swiftly and in a particular way? I eat them too. So what?

I’m from Louisiana. We eat everything.

Rattlesnake tastes great. So does alligator. We kill them too.

The potential of an even more weaponized internet is always looming on the horizon. There are children and vulnerable humans on the other end of these keyboards. It’s hard to remember that the trolls are also humans. They don’t act like it.

People have ended their lives based on things said when targeted by people they don’t even know over stupid subjects. Maybe snakes mean a lot to some people. I get that. It’s okay. They don’t mean a lot to me. In their own environment, I leave them alone. I take pictures of them—I still shoot them, just with my camera.

In my environment, I end them. It’s like an unspoken agreement between us they didn’t really agree to. It works for me.

When the human snakes target innocent people who aren’t strong enough to withstand the poison thrown at them, they fall victim to an insidious venom that twists itself around every thought until they’re consumed with it. The part that bothers me is the audacity of a stranger jumping in on my business—but it was on the internet, so I get it.

But a child, someone who has trouble processing emotions, a grieving person, an emotionally challenged individual, a person with suicidal ideation, any of the fragile and fringe of society—these people will have nothing to counteract the venom injected into their lives by a stranger’s comment.

Do better, people. Be better.

I’ll try not to ever mention killing dangerous creatures. Please try not to be less than human.