Lessons learned from a Timber Rattlesnake

The above photo was taken on the Wings and Water property by me as I was out working on the fruit trees. I believe it is a Timber verses a Eastern Rattlesnake. It is live and it was left unharmed. Matter of fact I have a population of Rattlesnakes residing on the property and despite some push back from some of the people that manage my property those particular snakes along with most of the other species on the property are not to be harmed.

What I have learned is we tend to build assumptions into our lives that things( mainly people) that do not fit into our particular box or stereotype are not to be tolerated. They don’t dress like us, they do not act like us, they do not have the same social standing as us, etc. etc. so we push them out of our lives. Maybe it is a result our innate desire to be tribal and someone not in our tribe could potentially harm us or it may be we all have basic thought patterns and when people do not display our way of thinking we don’t tend to cluster with that type. “hey that person can’t sit at lunch with us because she is part of the Artsy crowd.” It seems to me we have a political system that has become pretty divided and while I understand our system of Democracy is messy it does not need to become a state of Radicalism and well that thought brings me back around to the Rattlesnake.

Nature demands peaceful co-existence. All livings things are governed by this law and only we believe our species is above this law. I am not implying  “peaceful” in the sense of the snake forming friendships with the field mouse and they live happily ever after… Nature has placed The Mouse in its role in relation to other living things and the snake is placed in its role as well. The Mouse scavenges and the snake eats the mouse…. My point is differences are understood by nature. Those differences are in fact essential to the balance of all living life. We as humans with our critical thinking skills should  understand this better than any other species that exists on the planet especially as it comes to our own kind: Homo Sapiens.

Everlast in the Lyrics of its Song: What It’s Like,  applies lyrics to how we as humans apply our understanding from mainly a one sided point of view.  The lyrics are raw and maybe extreme on our treatment of one another but your will recognize some truths in it.  I do recommend listening to the song as a compliment to this article. Warning please get the non-explicit version as the language in the original song is harsh and not suitable for most, if any, ears……