Years ago when Caroline and I moved to Tuxedo Park,
we visited an out-building (an old disused garage) on my mother’s property where
we had stored some of our possessions after leaving our airy loft in Brooklyn Heights
for a smaller apartment in Manhattan. Keeping things there seemed like a good idea at
the time, but the space wasn’t perfectly
weather-tight and the atmosphere eventually turned our possessions (a Danish
teak desk my parents bought for my brother and me when we were children; some vinyl lps; old clothes and other items I
should have, but hadn’t, discarded) into an interesting sort of compost.
Tuxedo Park has a large and diverse snake population,
including poisonous specimens such as copperheads and rattlers. You need to remember this and cross tall-grass
areas carefully. Surprises lurk there
and it isn't uncommon to see sizable serpents crossing (and during summer
sleeping on) our roads.
I don’t remember whether we were looking for anything particular
that day or just doing a general inventory, but Caroline glanced down at one point, then up, having turned white as a sheet, which on her is really disturbing. At her feet was a long something I didn’t
immediately recognize, but which looked like varicolored tissue paper or,
perhaps, ladies’ stockings. Clearly stunned (but confident in her conclusion -- she is like that),
she posited that the object was a freshly-shed rattlesnake skin. Schooling and the Discovery Channel persuaded me that she was correct and it was only a short leap to the inevitable
question, “If that’s true, where is the rattlesnake?”
I remember immediately running from the garage back across
the meadow toward my mother’s house and also feeling a burning shock on my
shoulder before we were out the door. Later
that afternoon when we went out to jog, I felt queasily light-headed and my thoughts
were distorted, rapid and incoherent. I
was looking forward to running, but I couldn’t take more than a few steps
because my legs felt heavy and the arm where I was bitten was flushed and very
oddly swollen. (Imagine Francis Bacon
sculpting a human arm.) My not-very-bright, but crystal-clear thought, shared with my wife, was that I was turning into the Incredible Hulk.
Vodka and valium homeopathy didn't abate my symptoms and eventually
we learned that I had suffered a spider bite, not uncommon in Orange County, New
York, but something we hadn’t considered
because it was a totally outside our experience.
Today I “Occupy
11-11-11” and have decided to shed my old skin, which seems like a good idea.
But I’m mindful of the fact that I never actually saw the snake
who turned over a new leaf by losing and leaving his skin.
Did he have a good day that day somewhere else or did he merely disappear, trusting no forwarding address to the spider he managed to avoid?
Note: Illustration No. 5 is Jasper Francis Cropsey, Autumn Landscape, Sugarloaf Mountain, Orange County, New York, 1870
