First Day On the Job
Folks, I was in a pet store earlier this week and standing in front of the snake cage was the boss lady giving the newly minted, teenaged, employee the run down.
“Right,” she said, placing her hands on his shoulders and turning him round to face her. “Everything else I’ve told you is important, but what I’m about to tell you is critically important. So, I want you to stop thinking about your phone, look at me and listen very, very carefully, ok.”
The kid nodded.
Struth, I was half an aisle away, one hand holding a tin of goldfish food in mid-air and even I nodded.
“Ok,” she said, “this is it. Never, ever, ever, ever, let the snakes get out.”
The kid and I looked at the snake cage. A tiny python was curled around a tree branch enjoying the heat from a small lamp.
It didn’t look like something that would cause a stampede of terrified customers if it got out.
“Now,” said the boss, maintaining unblinking eye contact with the kid, “repeat what I just said back to me please.”
“Um, never let the snakes get out?”
“No. It wasn’t a question, and it was, ‘Never. Ever. Ever. Ever. Let. The. Snakes. Get. Out.’ Again please.”
The kid swallowed. “Never, ever, ever, ever let the snakes get out?”
“Mm, better. But once more for luck.”
“Never, ever, ever, ever let the snakes get out,” he said with a bit more conviction.
She smiled and patted him on the shoulder as they turned to look at the snake. “Again,” she said quietly.
“Never, ever, ever, ever, let the snakes get out!” beamed the lad.
Satisfied she had cut through, without having to download an app and hand over all her personal and private information, they moved on to the next aisle.
I wandered down to the reptile enclosures to check out the sad little collection of lizards and snakes doing what they usually do when they’re not attacking humans (me) i.e.: basically, sitting inert and staring blankly at nothing much in particular.
I really had to restrain myself from tapping the glass in order to get a reaction from any of them.
I didn’t, chiefly because I’m not a roving reptile harasser, and the gist of the boldly written sign nearby was, anyone caught rapping on the cages would be battered with a frozen kangaroo bone, have two guinea pigs shoved into their underwear then tossed bodily into the carpark.
After a few minutes of inactivity and marvelling at how much a python or bearded dragon costs (plus learning you needed to show your approved reptile licence before they’d even think about opening the cage door) I wandered off.
Back In My Day
I recalled as a boy in Innisfail, Far North Queensland, some kids I knew had pet crocodiles (or snakes) and no licence was needed back then. Unlike most of Gods’ creatures, they’re not particularly cute or cuddly when they’re babies; ditto for stonefish.
So, I didn’t feel too bad for prodding them with a stick whenever the opportunity presented itself.
As the little snappers grew, they usually wound up graduating from a bird cage or fish tank in the mates’ bedrooms, to a backyard cage where they’d wile away the hours sitting motionless at the bottom of an old bathtub half filled with mossy green water and rocks. There would be a tree branch to allow them to get in and out of the tub and some long grass to hide in.
For some reason, they never lasted long in captivity?
Time and again, the crocs would be found in the early stages of rigor mortis by their distressed young owners. I suppose after much prodding with a stick and calling out their names, the realisation would dawn on them that this wasn’t their pets’ usual state of inactivity, or that they were playing possum and their lack of response was clearly something far more serious.
I often wondered what it was about living in a small enclosure, safe from other predators (usually bigger crocs, dogs, cats etc) and being hand fed choice meaty morsels by a budding dinosaur wrangler that shortened their little saurian lives.
And, the other day, as I puttered away from the pet store, I knew what it was.
Sherlock Holmes (finally) Gets a Clue!
It had taken nearly fifty years to work it out, but it all the bits fell into place! Those deaths weren’t accidental!
Those pet crocs had been; murdered!
Yeah, I might not be the brightest bulb in the pack, but I’ll get there, eventually. Even if it is half a century later…
And it dawned on me, the grisly task would have been carried out by a concerned parent, relative, neighbour, or possibly some passing nutjob, who knew at bone level that, one day, the door of the pen would be left open, the latch would fail, or some other carefully hatched escape plan had come to fruition and, in the words of Billy Connolly, ‘chaos would ensue’.
It all made sense now.
Particularly as the little snappers grew to a size which could potentially remove the loving fingers of the young hands that fed it.
And they would get out. It was only a matter of time.
The Great Escapee
I recalled an old croc exhibit at Hartley’s Creek, north of Cairns, and its’ most famous resident, Charlie. He holds the record for the longest stretch of any croc kept in captivity, starting back in 1935 when he was first slammed into a pen for a crime he didn’t get to commit.
Interestingly, he was named Charlie in honor of the young Prince Charlie who visited his cage in 1966 during his ‘Grand Sneer Tour of the Colonies’.
It is not recorded if our current King Chuck tossed a peanut at his namesake.
Anyway, during his long captivity, Charlie often escaped his enclosure but was always quickly hunted down in the nearby creek, no doubt by desperate, wide-eyed staff, police and a park manager frantic at the loss of his #1 exhibit and the $ he’d lose, (oh, yes, public safety might also have been a concern).
Old Charlie would be caught (thankfully before any of the locals gleefully ventilated his hide with bullets) and be dragged back to his little prison with its’ dodgy latch.
Charlie’s lengthy days of solitary confinement came to an end in 2000, some sixty-five years after being locked up.
These days we don’t like caging animals in tiny concrete prisons for the gawping masses to look at (poke with sticks or toss peanuts at). There are still a few around, notably this one in a small pool at the zoo in Rockhampton’s botanical gardens:
But they’re looked at more with pity now than terror. Maybe Charlie and The Colonels’ long, lonely, boring lives are a lesson, or warning, to all of us that no matter what, ‘Never. Ever. Ever. Ever. Let. The. Snakes. Get. Out!’
Personally, after looking at the isolated pets for sale the other day, I reckon the real message is, ‘How about we don’t cage wild animals in the first place?’