Both ends of a snake

 

Today I relived a memory from my youth. After a visit to the Payson Temple, we drove over to the nearby Emerald Turf Farm. Once when I was just a lad, I was there visiting my friend Mark DeHart at his dad's farm. We were out exploring and wandered into an irrigation canal, dry at the time as I recall, but a fun place for boys to explore. One of us spotted a snake - not sure if it was a water snake, garter snake, etc. - but definitely not a rattler. I thought it would be fun to pick it up, and grasped it by the end of its tail.

As I lifted the snake, it took about a millisecond for him to whip his head around and sink his fangs into the fleshy area at the base of my thumb. Ouch! It took me about another millisecond to drop the snake and let it slither on its way.

I don't remember how old we were at the time. But I do know we were highly trained cub scouts. EVERYONE knows that when you're bitten by a snake, you have to cut an "X" over the fang marks and then suck out the venom! So we whipped out our pocket knives and proceded to attack my flesh.

Well, either we were chicken or squeamish, or else the knives were REALLY dull, or both - but as I recall, we barely make a slight impression on the skin, and certainly not an incision. But I saw the holes from the bite and decided that was enough - I sucked and spit, sucked and spit. Eventually we decided I probably extracted most of the venom, and so we went back to our exploring. It must have worked, since my hand didn't swell or become paralyzed, and I suffered no immediate or lasting impact from the bite. (Of course, everyone knows that you should NEVER "cut and suck," even if you're bitten by a rattler, right??)

I learned a very important lesson from this experience. When you pick up one end of a snake, you also pick up the other end! The tail may be safe and innocent, but it's connected to the head, and between the tail and the head is a very strong and agile body. If you don't want to deal with the snake head, leave its tail alone!

In life, we sometimes make the same mistake. Our decisions may seem easy and innocuous, but there can be related or hidden consequences we don't initially think of. It's hard to know all the implications of many choices. We can consult experts or others we trust, research to be well informed, try to ponder and evaluate possible outcomes, even seek inspiration and guidance. And especially, we should learn lessons from our own experiences!

I #GiveThanks for the lessons I've learned from my mistakes. I hope I can do a good job remembering them!