Snake Venom Quotes

Fear can’t hurt you,” she said. “When it washes over you, give it no power. It’s a snake with no venom. Remember that. That knowledge can save you.

The taipan is the one to watch out for. It is the most poisonous snake on Earth, with a lunge so swift and a venom so potent that your last mortal utterance is likely to be: "I say, is that a sn--

Racists are snakes. Their minds are closed but their mouths are wide open, full of venom, ready to sting and destroy people around them.

You know, you can touch a stick of dynamite, but if you touch a venomous snake it’ll turn around and bite you and kill you so fast it’s not even funny.

I don’t know what you’re referencing, madam,” the chairman says, his voice raised over mine. “I’m talking about menstruation, sir!” I shout in return. It’s like I set the hall on fire, manifested a venomous snake from thin air, also set that snake on fire, and then threw it at the board. The men all erupt into protestations and a fair number of horrified gasps. I swear one of them actually swoons at the mention of womanly bleeding.

I guess if you choose to trust a snake, you deserve his venom.

I could scarcely summon courage to rise. But even those large, venomous snakes were less dreadful to my imagination than the white men in that community called civilized.

Love is fatal; a snake that slithers into your life, poisons you with its venom and then leaves you there to die.

Hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders, and I like one class of the venomous creatures as little as I do the other. What a comfort it is, to be free to say so!

Shall each man," cried he, "find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone? I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. Man! You may hate, but beware! Your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness forever. Are you to be happy while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness? You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains—revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food! I may die, but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery. Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful. I will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom. Man, you shall repent of the injuries you inflict.

The very word virus began as a contradiction. We inherited the word from the Roman Empire, where it meant, at once, the venom of a snake or the semen of a man. Creation and destruction in one word.

Moonlight played across her body as if it loved her. Venomous snakes had stripes; Mila glowed. The only shadows that touched her were mine.

Here is an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot, and ink like an old-fashioned pen. It can weigh as much as a man and stretch as long as a car, yet it can pour its baggy, boneless body through an opening the size of an orange. It can change color and shape. It can taste with its skin. Most fascinating of all, I had read that octopuses are smart.

Watching across the aisles, the Nevers' faces began to change. One by one, their scowls turned sorrowful, their eyes melted to hurt. Hort, Ravan, Anadil, even Hester...as if they too wished they could have such joy. As if they too wished they could feel as wanted. Gone was their will to fight, lost to broken hearts, and the villains shrank into silence, snakes drained of venom.

Humans are more venomous than snakes

Control. Precision. He exuded it, like the colorful stripes on a venomous snake.

Whispers are like snakes; they slither into your ears and threaten to poison your sanity with their venom.

Hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders, and I like one class of the venomous creatures as little as I do the other. What a comfort it is, to be free to say so!

All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate. But it's more than that; no mere carrot-and-stick affair; because implicit in the game is the unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosities of the serpent; in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see, metaphorically, all conceivable oppositions, Alpha against Omega, father against mother; here is the war of Mary and Musa, and the polarities of knees and nose ... but I found, very early in my life, that the game lacked one crucial dimension, that of ambiguity - because, as events are about to show, it is also possible to slither down a ladder and climb to triumph on the venom of a snake ...

Do you by chance have anything for snake venom?” a cool voice asked.

I wanted to tell Ren the truth. I wanted to say that he was the best friend I’d ever had. That I was sorry about the way I had treated him. I wanted to tell him…that I loved him. But I couldn’t say anything. My throat was closed up, probably swollen from snake venom. All I could do was look at him as he knelt over me. That’s okay. Looking at his gorgeous face one last time is enough for me. I’ll die a happy woman. I was so tired. My eyelids were too heavy to keep open. I closed my eyes and waited for death to come. Ren cleared a space and sat down near me. Pillowing my head on his arm, he pulled me onto his lap and into his arms. I smiled. Even better. I can’t open my eyes to see him anymore, but I can feel his arms around me. My warrior angel can carry me in his arms up to heaven. He squeezed my closer to his body and whispered something in my ear that I couldn’t make out. Then darkness overtook me.

Our ancestors who did not have a fear of heights, who did not have a fear of eating something poisonous, who did not have a fear of venomous snakes and spiders, who were not afraid of drowning, well—they’re dead.

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d. Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined. Harpier cries ’Tis time, ’tis time. Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Silver’d in the moon’s eclipse, Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver’d by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.

There are some who say that Time is itself a hammer; that each slow second marks another tap that makes big rocks into little rocks, waterfalls into canyons, cliffs into beaches. There are some who say that Time is instead a blade. They see the dance of its razored tip, poised like a venomous snake, forever ready to slay faster than the eye can see. And there are some who say that Time is both hammer and blade. They say the hammer is a sculptor's mallet, and the blade is a sculptor's chisel: that each stroke is a refinement, a perfecting, a discovery of truth and beauty within what would otherwise be blank and lifeless stone. And I name this saying wisdom.

During their colonial rule of India, the British government began to worry about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi. To reduce the numbers, they instituted a reward for every dead snake brought to officials. In response, Indian citizens dutifully complied and began breeding the snakes to slaughter and bring to officials. The snake problem was worse than when it started because the British officials didn’t think at the second level.

No matter how high your grass, a snake will always show themselves. Don't wait until your bitten to pay attention to their venom. ~S. Turner~

A woman decorated in snakes. They slithered across her body, clothing her. She drank their venom and thirsted for more. Her spirit enveloped the world, and she drew it in.

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful. I will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom. Man, you shall repent of the injuries you inflict.

A snake's venom is in its teeth but a woman's venom is in her tongue

Every word was poison, like snake venom dripping into a pool, but it’s helped me understand him.

And this we do for pleasure,’ Greta McCraw muttered from the shadows, ‘so that we may shortly be at the mercy of venomous snakes and poisonous ants . . . how foolish can human creatures be!

Getting to be mean in whatever capacity you most effectively can is a great way to let a lot of that internal rage out. I always compare myself to a venomous snake: in order to be the best version of myself for the world, I must expel my venom. Never feel bad for standing up for yourself or for standing up for others, because it's never in vain, even if it can feel like it at the time. You are worth the respect that you so freely give to others, so if someone refuses to give that to you as a fellow human, then offer it to yourself in the form of advocacy. I hope that people continue to come my way for the courage to truly allow themselves this freedom. I'll always be here to remind you: Being mean is not always required, but sometimes it's necessary. And there's nothing wrong with that!

I passed a wretched night; for the heat of the swamp, the mosquitos, and the constant terror of snakes, had brought on a burning fever. I had just dropped asleep, when they came and told me it was time to go back to that horrid swamp. I could scarcely summon courage to rise. But even those large, venomous snakes were less dreadful to my imagination than the white men in that community called civilized.

It’s all true.” Venom’s hair lifted up in the wind coming through his open window, his profile so astonishingly perfect that her breath caught for a second. “I’m deadlier than the deadliest snake in the world, with the ability to impact strong immortals. But you’re not too far behind.” “Try being used as a chew toy by an insane archangel,” Holly said with a grim smile. “It does wonders for your poison, I hear.

Those of you who have read my tale up till now must be wondering who is this witch devoid of hatred, who is mislead each time by the wickedness in men’s hearts? For the nth time I made up my mind to be different and fight it out tooth and nail. But how to work a change in my hear and coat its lining with snake venom? How to make it into a vessel for bitter and violent feelings? To get it to love evil? Instead I could only feel tenderness and compassion for the disinherited and a sense of revolt against injustice.

Zarathustra is the prophet of the Church of the Serpent. He himself was distinctly serpentine. Nietzsche is one of the snake philosophers. He has venom towards the weak and the meek. He has the fierce bite of knowledge. We all need the Serpent’s Kiss if we wish to become enlightened. You must poison your old self if you wish to find your new self, your higher self. Your old views are poisonous. Poison must meet poison.

A dozen cobras moved as one, shattering their bottles. Wine and glass sprayed the room. The snakes sprang for Isyllt's attacker with fangs unfolded. He screamed high and sharp as they uncoiled, long slick bodies whipping through the air. She wasn't sure if their venom could survive death and pickling, but it didn't seem to matter. After several bites, he curled on the floor, weeping and trying to bat the undead snakes away.

Our marriage began with knots and fangs; vows inked on skin. Black venom stained our fingers, twinned snakes strangling the marriage vein in Celtic macramé – cocksure monogamy. We became one, me and the gun, the serpent reeling itself from the needle. I had few firsts left; marriage a wild west for the hedonist. Snakes unspooled like figure-eights, symbols of eternity. Acrimony, alimony; Leave the moaning to adults. We children will be wiser wed, inoculated – these hickeys, homeopathy.

bloody revolutions just do not appeal to me. I never wish to kill even a venomous snake, not to speak of a venomous man.

I know you’re poisonous,” she said. “I still want to play with you.” “What idiot told you that? I’m venomous. I’m not a fucking mushroom, I’m more like a snake

Primates who evolved in places seething with venomous snakes have better vision than primates who didn’t evolve in those places. But

of the most venomous snakes in the Americas.

Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly that the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size, and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are more wonderous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death. Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it is their mortal enemy, and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it.

Jararaca” his father said. It was a pit viper, one of the most venomous snakes in the Americas. (A jararaca bite will cause a person to bleed from the eyes and become, as a biologist put it, “a corpse piece by piece.”)

Are you to be happy while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness? You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains—revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food! I may die, but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery. Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful. I will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom. Man, you shall repent of the injuries you inflict.

It’s not very elegant,” Lotus said and shook her head. “If it was elegance you wanted, why did you ask an old beggar? It was also the place where we managed to trick Old Venom into consuming my urine, so what about Eat Piss Island?

The moment I was old enough to play board games I fell in love with Snakes and Ladders. O perfect balance of rewards and penalties O seemingly random choices made by tumbling dice Clambering up ladders slithering down snakes I spent some of the happiest days of my life. When in my time of trial my father challenged me to master the game of shatranji I infuriated him by preferring to invite him instead to chance his fortune among the ladders and nibbling snakes. All games have morals and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures as no other activity can hope to do the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb a snake is waiting just around the corner and for every snake a ladder will compensate. But it's more than that no mere carrot-and-stick affair because implicit in the game is the unchanging twoness of things the duality of up against down good against evil the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuousities of the serpent in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see metaphorically all conceivable opposition Alpha against Omega father against mother here is the war of Mary and Musa and the polarities of knees and nose... but I found very early in my life that the game lacked one crucial dimension that of ambiguity - because as events are about to show it is also possible to slither down a ladder and lcimb to truimph on the venom of a snake... Keeping things simple for the moment however I recrod that no sooner had my mother discovered the ladder to victory represented by her racecourse luck than she was reminded that the gutters of the country were still teeming with snakes.

Loki was now captured, and with no thought of mercy he was taken to a cave. They [the Æsir] took three flat stones and, setting them on their edges, broke a hole through each of them. Then they caught Loki’s sons, Vali and Nari or Narfi. The Æsir changed Vali into a wolf, and he ripped apart his brother Narfi. Next the Æsir took his guts, and with them they bound Loki on to the top of the three stones – one under his shoulders, a second under his loins and the third under his knees. The fetters became iron. ‘Then Skadi took a poisonous snake and fastened it above Loki so that its poison drips on to his face. But Sigyn, his wife, placed herself beside him from where she holds a bowl to catch the drops of venom. When the bowl becomes full, she leaves to pour out the poison, and at that moment the poison drips on to Loki’s face. He convulses so violently that the whole earth shakes – it is what is known as an earthquake. He will lie bound there until Ragnarok.

The enemy is typically depicted as a dangerous octopus, a vicious dragon, a multiheaded hydra, a giant venomous tarantula, or an engulfing Leviathan. Other frequently used symbols include vicious predatory felines or birds, monstrous sharks, and ominous snakes, particularly vipers and boa constrictors. Scenes depicting strangulation or crushing, ominous whirlpools, and treacherous quicksands also abound in pictures from the time of wars, revolutions, and political crises. The juxtaposition of paintings from non-ordinary states of consciousness that depict perinatal experiences with the historical pictorial documentation collected by Lloyd de Mause and Sam Keen offer strong evidence for the perinatal roots of human violence.

...I grow snakes for hair to hold the venom secreted from this heart loaded too heavily with all they hate about themselves and if they hiss it's only because like any monster I've long since lost my own right to scream" - from "Medusa", Reduction Fired

Even a poisonous snake is safe to handle in cold weather, when it is sluggish. Its venom is still there, but inactive. In the same way, there are many people whose cruelty, ambition, or self-indulgence fails to match the most outrageous cases only by the grace of fortune.

Passion soon cools, whereas reason is always consistent: yet even in cases where anger has continued to burn, it often happens that although there may be many who deserve to die, yet after the death of two or three it ceases to slay. Its first onset is fierce, just as the teeth of snakes when first roused from their lair are venomous, but become harmless after repeated bites have exhausted their poison. Consequently those who are equally guilty are not equally punished, and often he who has done less is punished more, because he fell in the way of anger when it was fresher.

Another girl, a typical girl, would be impressed, but there was nothing typical about Lucy Gray Baird. In fact, there was something intimidating about a girl who could pull off such a brazen performance on the heels of the mayor's assault. And that, just after she had dropped a venomous snake down another girl's dress. Of course, he didn't know that it was venomous, but that was where the mind went, wasn't it? She was terrifying, really. And here he was in his uniform, clutching a rose like some lovestruck schoolboy, hoping she would — what? Like him? Trust him? Not kill him on sight?

working sugar was by far the most brutal work a slave could be assigned. Most died by the age of twenty-five from infections caused by the serrated leaves, snakebite from the venomous snakes lurking in the fields, and heat exhaustion from having to stir the cane down to syrup in vats heated underneath by flames

Traces of historical associations can long outlast actual contact. In the dense, subtropical forests from India across to the South China Sea, venomous snakes are common, and there is always an advantage in pretending to be something dangerous. The slow loris, a weird, nocturnal primate, has a number of unusual features that, taken together, seem to be mimicking spectacled cobras. They move in a sinuous, serpentine way through the branches, always smooth and slow. When threatened, they raise their arms up behind their head, shiver and hiss, their wide, round eyes closely resembling the markings on the inside of the spectacled cobra’s hood. Even more remarkably, when in this position, the loris has access to glands in its armpit which, when combined with saliva, can produce a venom capable of causing anaphylactic shock in humans. In behaviour, colour and even bite, the primate has come to resemble the snake, a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Today, the ranges of the loris and cobras do not overlap, but climate reconstructions reaching back tens of thousands of years suggest that once they would have been similar. It is possible that the loris is an outdated imitation artist, stuck in an evolutionary rut, compelled by instinct to act out an impression of something neither it nor its audience has ever seen.

His name could sadden, and his acts surprize; But they that fear'd him dared not to despise: Man spurns the worm, but pauses ere he wake The slumbering venom of the folded snake: The first may turn—but not avenge the blow; The last expires—but leaves no living foe— Fast to the doomed offender's form it clings— And he may crush—not conquer—still it stings!

When someone is filled with the Holy Spirit’s power and is zealous to do good, their “fire” for God will always expose their enemies. It was the fire that made the snake come out and bite Paul. “Paul gathered a pile of sticks for the fire. He was putting the sticks on the fire, and a poisonous snake came out because of the heat and bit him on the hand.” Acts 28:3

Black Widow by Stewart Stafford She blinds me with her caress. Hand upon my chest, Venom kisses like snake bites ecstatic and unbecoming night. She drags me to her tomb, graveyard of many a groom, Lovers wrapped in silken lace, In webs of death, find their place. Creeping dawn on morn, Frostbitten and reborn, Clinging on so tight, Her kiss, the shroud of night. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

Yeah, ignore me." Aaro pawed through the bags until he found one with stenciled hearts on it. "By the way, you never did tell me your size. Hope nothing binds or pinches your tender pink places, babe." He let the bag fly. It landed on Lily's lap. She shrank back as if it were a venomous snake. Fuck-me-please panties spilled out. A tangle of satin, lace and silk. Red, black, peach, flesh-tone. Bruno growled expletives in a Calabrese dialect as he shoved underwear into the bag. It was his standard tension reliever. None of the people he insulted knew he was commenting on their grandmother's predilection for sex with sheep. "I am not wearing that slutty, disgusting stuff." Lily's voice was haughty. "Certainly not after you're pawed it. Dog." "Arf, arf." Aaro's tone was more cheerful than it had been so far any time this morning. "I love it when she spits bile.

One of our most dangerous missions before hunting season is de-snaking our blinds. Because of the location of most of our blinds, they’re a hot spot for cottonmouth moccasins and other venomous snakes. During one cleaning we killed a couple of cottonmouths and a black widow spider. Phil walked out onto the shooting porch and said, “I think we got it.” As I looked at Phil, I saw a cottonmouth hanging from a button willow only inches from his head. After prompting my dad to duck, I shot the snake over his head.

The deadliest snake in the world is the inland taipan, by the way. A single drop of its venom is enough to kill a hundred men. And yet, in the history of snakebites, this species of snake has only ever killed one person. I told that to Ms. Bixby at the end of that day, the day she broke the news. She asked me what the moral was. She's always asking me what I think the moral is, because she knows I sometimes don't get that part. But the moral of the inland taipan was easy: Just because it can doesn't mean it will. Things are never as bad as they seem.

From the waist up, she was a humanoid female with snakes for hair. (If that sounds familiar, it’s because the hairdo really caught on with other monsters later.) From the waist down, she was a four-legged dragon. Thousands of vipers sprouted from her legs like grass skirts. Her waist was ringed with the heads of fifty hideous beasts—bears, boars, wombats, you name it—always snapping and snarling and trying to eat Kampê’s shirt. Large, dark reptilian wings grew from her shoulder blades. Her scorpionlike tail swished back and forth, dripping venom. Basically, Kampê didn’t get invited on many dates.

Snakes are habitually parsimonious with their poison; they parcel it out carefully, innoculating their victims with just the right amount to paralyse them and begin the process of predigestion. Animals that they intend merely to scare away do not normally receive much venom at all, or just enough to make them more careful in the future. If snakes were humans they would be the kind of people who save up small coins and put them into investment accounts, eat chocolates only after lunch on Sundays, beleive in swift corporal punishment to deter criminals, are sceptical about the value of social services, and give pocket handkerchiefs for Christmas presents.

The bowl she holds fills slowly, one drop at a time, but eventually the poison fills the bowl to the brim. It is then and only then that Sigyn turns away from Loki. She takes the bowl and pours the venom away, and while she is gone, the snake’s poison falls on to Loki’s face and into his eyes. He convulses then, jerks and judders, jolts and twists and writhes, so much that the whole earth shakes. When that happens, we here in Midgard call it an earthquake. They say that Loki will be bound there in the darkness beneath the earth, and Sigyn will be with him, holding the bowl to catch the poison above his face and whispering that she loves him, until Ragnarok comes and brings the end of days.

Sometimes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are presented as a hunting expeditions (“As British close in on Basra, Iraqis scurry away”; “Terror hunt snares twenty-five”; and “Net closes around Bin Laden”) with enemy bases as animal nests (“Pakistanis give up on lair of Osama”; “Terror nest in Fallujah is attacked”) from which the prey must be driven out (“Why Bin Laden is so difficult to smoke out”; “America’s new dilemma: how to smoke Bin Laden out from caves”). We need to trap the animal (“Trap may net Taliban chief”; “FBI terror sting nets mosque leaders”) and lock it in a cage (“Even locked in a cage, Saddam poses serious danger”). Sometimes the enemy is a ravening predator (“Chained beast—shackled Saddam dragged to court”), or a monster (“The terrorism monster”; “Of monsters and Muslims”), while at other times he is a pesky rodent (“Americans cleared out rat’s nest in Afghanistan”; “Hussein’s rat hole”), a venomous snake (“The viper awaits”; “Former Arab power is ‘poisonous snake’”), an insect (“Iraqi forces find ‘hornet’s nest’ in Fallujah”; “Operation desert pest”; “Terrorists, like rats and cockroaches, skulk in the dark”), or even a disease organism (“Al Qaeda mutating like a virus”; “Only Muslim leaders can remove spreading cancer of Islamic terrorism”). In any case, they reproduce at an alarming rate (“Iraq breeding suicide killers”; “Continent a breeding ground for radical Islam”).

There once was a female snake that roamed around a small village in the countryside of Egypt. She was commonly seen by villagers with her small baby as they grazed around the trees. One day, several men noticed the mother snake was searching back and forth throughout the village in a frenzy — without her young. Apparently, her baby had slithered off on its own to play while she was out looking for food. Yet the mother snake went on looking for her baby for days because it still hadn't returned back to her. So one day, one of the elder women in the village caught sight of the big snake climbing on top of their water supply — an open clay jug harvesting all the village's water. The snake latched its teeth on the big jug's opening and sprayed its venom into it. The woman who witnessed the event was mentally handicapped, so when she went to warn the other villagers, nobody really understood what she was saying. And when she approached the jug to try to knock it over, she was reprimanded by her two brothers and they locked her away in her room. Then early the next day, the mother snake returned to the village after a long evening searching for her baby. The children villagers quickly surrounded her while clapping and singing because she had finally found her baby. And as the mother snake watched the children rejoice in the reunion with her child, she suddenly took off straight for the water supply — leaving behind her baby with the villagers' children. Before an old man could gather some water to make some tea, she hissed in his direction, forcing him to step back as she immediately wrapped herself around the jug and squeezed it super hard. When the jug broke burst into a hundred fragments, she slithered away to gather her child and return to the safety of her hole. Many people reading this true story may not understand that the same feelings we are capable of having, snakes have too. Thinking the villagers killed her baby, the mother snake sought out revenge by poisoning the water to destroy those she thought had hurt her child. But when she found her baby and saw the villagers' children, her guilt and protective instincts urged her to save them before other mothers would be forced to experience the pain and grief of losing a child. Animals have hearts and minds too. They are capable of love, hatred, jealousy, revenge, hunger, fear, joy, and caring for their own and others. We look at animals as if they are inferior because they are savage and not civilized, but in truth, we are the ones who are not being civil by drawing a thick line between us and them — us and nature. A wild animal's life is very straightforward. They spend their time searching and gathering food, mating, building homes, and meditating and playing with their loved ones. They enjoy the simplicity of life without any of our technological gadgetry, materialism, mass consumption, wastefulness, superficiality, mindless wars, excessive greed and hatred. While we get excited by the vibrations coming from our TV sets, headphones and car stereos, they get stimulated by the vibrations of nature. So, just because animals may lack the sophisticated minds to create the technology we do or make brick homes and highways like us, does not mean their connections to the etheric world isn't more sophisticated than anything we could ever imagine. That means they are more spiritual, reflective, cosmic, and tuned into alternate universes beyond what our eyes can see. So in other words, animals are more advanced than us. They have the simple beauty we lack and the spiritual contentment we may never achieve.

romantic between us, but when he opens his arms I don’t hesitate to go into them. His body is familiar to me — the way it moves, the smell of wood smoke, even the sound of his heart beating I know from quiet moments on a hunt — but this is the first time I really feel it, lean and hard-muscled against my own. “Listen,” he says. “Getting a knife should be pretty easy, but you’ve got to get your hands on a bow. That’s your best chance.” “They don’t always have bows,” I say, thinking of the year there were only horrible spiked maces that the tributes had to bludgeon one another to death with. “Then make one,” says Gale. “Even a weak bow is better than no bow at all.” I have tried copying my father’s bows with poor results. It’s not that easy. Even he had to scrap his own work sometimes. “I don’t even know if there’ll be wood,” I say. Another year, they tossed everybody into a landscape of nothing but boulders and sand and scruffy bushes. I particularly hated that year. Many contestants were bitten by venomous snakes or went insane from thirst. “There’s almost always some wood,” Gale says. “Since that year half of them died of cold. Not much entertainment in that.” It’s true. We spent one Hunger Games watching the players freeze to death at night. You could hardly see them because they were just huddled in balls and had no wood for fires or torches or anything. It was considered very anticlimactic in the Capitol, all those quiet, bloodless deaths. Since then, there’s usually been wood

Testing his image in Hartford, he would refine it further in subsequent speeches. “If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road,” Lincoln began, “any man would say I might seize the nearest stick and kill it; but if I found that snake in bed with my children, that would be another question. I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. . . . But if there was a bed newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a batch of young snakes and put them there with them, I take it no man would say there was any question how I ought to decide! . . . The new Territories are the newly made bed to which our children are to go, and it lies with the nation to say whether they shall have snakes mixed up with them or not.” The snake metaphor acknowledged the constitutional protection of slavery where it legally existed, while harnessing the protective instincts of parents to safeguard future generations from the venomous expansion of slavery. This homely vision of the territories as beds for American children exemplified what James Russell Lowell described as Lincoln’s ability to speak “as if the people were listening to their own thinking out loud.” When Seward reached for a metaphor to dramatize the same danger, he warned that if slavery were allowed into Kansas, his countrymen would have “introduced the Trojan horse” into the new territory. Even if most of his classically trained fellow senators immediately grasped his intent, the Trojan horse image carried neither the instant accessibility of Lincoln’s snake-in-the-bed story nor its memorable originality.

We killed them all when we came here. The people came and burned their land The forests where they used to feed We burned the trees that gave them shade And burned to bush, to scrub, to heath We made it easier to hunt. We changed the land, and they were gone. Today our beasts and dreams are small As species fall to time and us But back before the black folk came Before the white folk’s fleet arrived Before we built our cities here Before the casual genocide, This was the land where nightmares loped And hopped and ran and crawled and slid. And then we did the things we did, And thus we died the things we died. We have not seen Diprotodon A wombat bigger than a room Or run from Dromornithidae Gigantic demon ducks of doom All motor legs and ripping beaks A flock of geese from hell’s dark maw We’ve lost carnivorous kangaroo A bouncy furrier T Rex And Thylacoleo Carnifex the rat-king-devil-lion-thing the dropbear fantasy made flesh. Quinkana, the land crocodile Five metres long and fast as fright Wonambi, the enormous snake Who waited by the water-holes and took the ones who came to drink who were not watchful, clever, bright. Our Thylacines were tiger-wolves until we drove them off the map Then Megalania: seven meters of venomous enormous lizard... and more, and more. The ones whose bones we’ve never seen. The megafauna haunt our dreams. This was their land before mankind Just fifty thousand years ago. Time is a beast that eats and eats gives nothing back but ash and bones And one day someone else will come to excavate a heap of stones And wonder, What were people like? Their teeth weren’t sharp. Their feet were slow. They walked Australia long ago before Time took them into tales We’re transients. The land remains. Until its outlines wash away. While night falls down like dropbears don’t to swallow up Australia Day.

Oh, but to get through this night. Why won’t sleep come? What’s bothering me here in the dark? It’s not the badgers, it’s not the snakes. What’s bothering me? Something darker is worrying a hole inside me—look how my legs are trembling. Stop moving, Tatiana. That’s how the carnivores find you, by the flash of life on your body, they find you and eat you while you sleep. Like venomous spiders, they’ll bite you first to lull you into sleep—you won’t even feel it—and then they will gnaw your flesh until nothing remains. But even the animals eating her alive was not the thing that worried the sick hole in Tatiana’s stomach as she lay in the leaves with her face hidden from the forest, with her arms over her head, in case anything decided to fall on her. She should’ve made herself a shelter but it got dark so fast, and she was so sure she would find the lake, she hadn’t been thinking of making herself more comfortable in the woods. She kept walking and walking, and then was downed and breathless and unprepared for pitch black night. To quell the terror inside her, to not hear her own voices, Tatiana whimpered. Lay and cried, low and afraid. What was tormenting her from the inside out? Was it worry over Marina? No... not quite. But close. Something about Marina. Something about Saika... Saika. The girl who caused trouble between Dasha and her dentist boyfriend, the girl who pushed her bike into Tatiana’s bike to make her fall under the tires of a downward truck rushing headlong... the girl who saw Tatiana’s grandmother carrying a sack of sugar and told her mother who told her father who told the Luga Soviet that Vasily Metanov harbored sugar he had no intention of giving up? The girl who did something so unspeakable with her own brother she was nearly killed by her own father’s hand—and she herself had said the boy got worse—and this previously unmentioned brother was, after all, dead. The girl who stood unafraid under rowan trees and sat under a gaggle of crows and did not feel black omens, the girl who told Tatiana her wicked stories, tempted Tatiana with her body, turned away from Marina as Marina was drowning...who turned Marina against Tatiana, the girl who didn’t believe in demons, who thought everything was all good in the universe, could she . . . What if...? What if this was not an accident? Moaning loudly, Tatiana turned away to the other side as if she’d just had a nightmare. But she hadn’t been dreaming. Saika took her compass and her knife. But Marina took her watch. And there it was. That was the thing eating up Tatiana from the inside out. Could Marina have been in on something like this? Twisting from side to side did not assuage her torn stomach, did not mollify her sunken heart. Making anguished noises, her eyes closed, she couldn’t think of fields, or Luga, or swimming, or clover or warm milk, anything. All good thoughts were drowned in the impossible sorrow. Could Marina have betrayed her?

Eden by Maisie Aletha Smikle In the garden Eden Streams of tranquility glide Flowers magnificently bloom Adam, Eve and animals freely roam Springs sprout Waterfalls emerge Angels smile Earth and Heaven were once in sync Absent was the sting of sin There were no frost To bite the grass Causing trees to freeze There were no fierce heat To kindle a blaze There were no winds That were unkind There were no raindrops That weren't welcome All were in perfect peace All were in harmony so sweet The garden Eden Was the home of the people Handmade by the Father Precious were they Adam and Eve God's first human masterpieces They were loved God gave them a home And grew for them a lovely garden God gave them pets of all species He gave them glorious healing spas and herbs God gave them fruits and food of every kind Everything Adam and Eve had to their hearts desire An envious snake Probably a BOA Saw joy peace love and happiness And hated joy peace love and happiness BOA vowed to destroy love peace joy and happiness BOA wanted to create distrust and enmity instead BOA conspired against love peace joy and happiness And conspired to have Adam and Eve thrown out of their home BOA snatched love joy peace and happiness BOA caused the first family Adam and Eve To be thrown out of their home naked A home that was God's unencumbered gift BOA was happy when happiness left When joy love and peace took flight and went And distrust and enmity remain Where BOA can hiss and strike it's venom of loathe Until people are down Naked and have no home BOA is truly a disgrace Indeed BOA is a scrooge

Please, spit forth your venom, mistress snake.

Don’t always open the door when annoying thoughts come to visit you; don't let them in, let them stay outside! Remember, if you don't bring a venomous snake near you, it can't bite you!

Scientists at the University of Michigan investigated the evolutionary origins of fear. They say our current fears are often driven by our past lifestyles. Early humans used to regularly face potentially lethal danger from hungry predators and venomous snakes, members of other tribes, violent weather and treacherous landscapes, loss of social status, and so on.* This is why humans today can still easily spot rustling in bushes or snakes slithering through the grass. Why we’re wary of strangers. Why we avoid bad weather and heights. Why we become anxious when we have to stick our necks out in public, like with public speaking.

The girl’s head might be at the level of Lilah-Mae’s chest, but a snake doesn’t have to be tall to be deadly. All the better to slip unassumingly through the grass and deliver its venom.

Raven is the most stubborn fucking girl I’ve ever known. She’s venom in the water. Not the snake itself, but the fatal liquid that floats across the top. No matter where you step, if even twenty feet away, she’s finding her way inside. She’s in me. She’s in my brothers.

An example of this mimicry can be observed in nonvenomous milk snakes, as they look very similar to highly venomous coral snakes.

They say our current fears are often driven by our past lifestyles. Early humans used to regularly face potentially lethal danger from hungry predators and venomous snakes, members of other tribes, violent weather and treacherous landscapes, loss of social status, and so on.

Thus, there is an ambivalence here about the death-aspect of the Goddess. Clearly, she represents regeneration as well as death.  Indeed, the venom of a snake can be both poison and antitoxin. As I will discuss on the pages that follow, Medusa holds here the functions of the prehistoric Goddess of the life continuum: birth, death, and then regeneration. She is multifunctional and multidimensional and she should be viewed in all of her complexity, through a non-patriarchal lens.

You saw what I’ve done, Mom!!” bragged the child. “What was that creature anyway?!” “It was a snake, a venomous one, the Arabian-horned viper,” replied the mother, shaking in fear from what just happened. “You were lucky it was a young one,” “A snake, huh?!! Well, he got what he deserved,” said the fawn. “You called me brave and hero, so will you name me Shuja’ or Batal ?” “Neither,” said the mother, pulling her son into a hug, “I’ll call you Nader,” Nader means rare, one of a kind.

At the apex of the snake's resistance, its body formed a fine powerful arc that was held momentarily in perfect tension, like a bow. Woman and snake were perfectly attuned to the moment and the task, each focused on the other. Hermine's absolute command over the creature, like her power over all the island, was as inalterable as the equality of the three sides of an equilateral triangle. The storm-colored m'sauga gradually torqued her thick body into a flattened S in her silent, flowing resistance, matching the resistance of Hermine's right arm, and turned to reveal a smoky ribbed belly. Her mouth opened wide, as if in a yawn, and she revealed a pearly pink-white iridescence, the color of a princess dress or the inside of a river clam. Another wave of morel-mushroom musk rose as the venomous fangs bit the air in a staccato rhythm.

Fact is that you’re a snake girl, immune to venom. Why do you let a few poisonous words hurt you?

That evening, doodling in her book of True Things in the henhouse, Donkey drew a snake who had eaten another snake just barely smaller than itself and so was entirely full, from tip to tail. Then she decided that this snake-eating snake would actually be inside another snake, a rattlesnake, so she drew a third snake around it. And she knew that a king snake, immune to venom, would eat a rattlesnake, so she put a fourth snake around the others. She considered then that the snake doodle moved back in time. Before the biggest snake could eat the second-biggest snake, all the inside eating had to have happened already. What she had drawn could not logically be older snakes eating younger snakes but precisely the opposite. The younger snake grew up big enough to devour the older snake, who'd already devoured its elder, and so on back in time. The nested dolls Rose Thorn had given her were perhaps not mothers with babies inside them, but babies grown large enough to eat their mothers. All her life she was afraid of Herself eating her, but maybe there was--- also or instead--- an opposite problem.

But he listed Wayne’s blinding as unsolved. The snake venom had bleached his pupils white, and the skin around his eye sockets had required grafts. The doctors had had to use skin from his buttocks, and because his buttocks were hairy, the skin around his eyes grew hair, too.

Guns can be a strength in the hands of trained law enforcement officials and soldiers with character, but in the hands of civilians they are not just weakness, but a sickness. Without a trained host with character, a gun acts like a parasite, it not only makes the host sick both mentally and physically, but more importantly it sickens an entire society. Let me put this in perspective. In the hands of a civilian, snake venom is poison, in the hands of a scientist, it is medicine. So to put it in a nutshell - carry goodness, not guns. Civilization will never see the sun till the civilians reject their gun.

And like a goddess, she had a kind of terrifying intensity. Her skin was paler than normal from the cold water. Next to that, her red hair and green eyes looked as vivid as a venomous snake. Maybe more Medusa than Aphrodite.

A scorpion or snake bite can be treated with anti-venom or a computer virus can be removed with an antivirus. But once the mind becomes disordered, there is no concrete scientific solution to fix it immediately.

Standing in the water with her red hair all wild and wavy around her shoulders, she looked like Aphrodite. Like a goddess made flesh for the very first time. And like a goddess, she had a kind of terrifying intensity. Her skin was paler than normal from the cold water. Next to that, her red hair and green eyes looked as vivid as a venomous snake. Maybe more Medusa than Aphrodite.

Most people were terrified of snakes because they thought they were ugly or venomous or evil. Some snakes were, but judging an entire species by a few bad apples was like judging all humans by the serial killer population.

Jumbo mamba!” trilled Kat. “Kill it!” screeched Mrs. Palmer. “It’s poisonous!” “That’s a mauve-banded king snake,” said Levi. He’d seen pictures in one of his wildlife books. “It’s not venomous. It squeezes its prey.

Modern day witches talk about "raising power." Catholics feel true reverence in the power of the consecrated host. Muslim pilgrims experience transforming power as they near the Kaaba. Snake handling Christians feel a holy anointing which protects them from deadly venom. All of these are spiritual cousins of Sacred Harp.

MEDEA: Monster - an epithet too good for you... so you come to me, do you, you byword of aversion both in heaven and on earth, to me your own worst enemy? This is not courage. This is not being brave: to look a victim in the eyes whom you've betrayed - somebody you loved - this is a disease and the foulest that a man can have. You are shameless. But you have done well to come. I can unload some venom from my heart and you can smart to hear it. To begin at the beginning, yes, first things first, I saved your life - as every son of Greece who stepped on board the Argo knows. Your mission was to yoke the fire-breathing bulls and so the death-bearing plot of dragons' teeth. I came to your rescue, lit up life for you, slew the guardian of the Golden Fleece - that giant snake that hugged it sleepless coil on coil. I deserted my father and my home to come away with you to Iolcus by Mount Pelion, full of zeal and very little sense. I killed King Pelias - a horrid death, perpetrated through his daughters - and overturned their home. All this for you. I bore your sons, you reprobate man, just to be discarded for a new bride. Had you been childless, this craving for another bedmate might have been forgiven. But no: faith in vows was simply shattered. I am baffled. Do you suppose the gods of old no longer rule? Or is it that mankind now has different principles? Because your every vow to me, you surely know, is null and void. Curse this right hand of mine, so often held in yours, and these knees of mine sullied to no purpose by the grasp of a rotten man. You have turned my hopes to lies. Come now, tell me frankly, as if we were two friends, as if you really were prepared to help (I hope the question makes you wince): where do I go from here? [With a bitter laugh.] Home to my father, perhaps, and my native land, both of whom I sacrificed for you? Or to the poor deprived daughters of Pelias? They would be overjoyed to entertain their father's murderer. So this is how things stand. Among my loved ones at home I am execrated woman. There was no call for me to hurt them but now I have a death feud on my hands - and all for you. What a reward! What a heroine you have made me among the daughters of Hellas! Lucky Medea, having you! Such a wonderful husband, and so loyal! I leave this land displaced, expelled, deprived of friends, only my children with me and alone. What a charming record for our new bridegroom this: 'His own sons and the wife who saved him are wayside beggars.' [She breaks off and looks upward.] O Zeus, what made you give us clear signs for telling mere glitter from true gold, but when we need to know the base metal of a man no stamp upon his flesh for telling counterfeit?

There is no such thing as a non-dangerous dictator! Like all the venomous snakes, all dictators are dangerous! Then what is the antidote? Antidote is our love for freedom and our unshakable determination on the matter of keeping this love!

Talking of snakes, Mrs. Montgomery told me that once she nearly stood upon a krait - one of the most venomous snakes in India. She has been very ill at the time, suffering from acute facial neuralgia, 'so that I didn't care if I trod on fifty kraits. I was quite stupid with pain, and was going back in the evening to my bungalow, preceded by a servant who was carrying a lamp. Suddenly he stopped and said "Krait, Mem-sahib!" - but I was far too ill to notice what he was saying, and went straight on, and the krait was lying right in the middle of the path! The servant did a thing absolutely without precedent in India - he touched me! - he put hand on my shoulder and pulled me back. My shoe came off and I stopped. Of course if he hadn't done that I should have undoubtedly have been killed; but I didn't like it all the same same, and got rid of him soon after.

Zero-sum thinking is a name for envy. Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, gives an apt description of the “House of Envy” (as a poet in that most zero-sum of political systems, the Roman empire, might): “Envy within, busy at the meal of snake’s flesh... her tongue dripped venom. Only the sight of suffering could bring a smile to her lips. She never knew the comfort of sleep, but... looked with dismay on men’s good fortune... She could hardly refrain from weeping when she saw no cause for tears.” I didn’t know Hillary Clinton’s involvement in politics dated back to the reign of Augustus. Then

Resentment is like venom that continues to pour through your system, doing its poisonous damage long after being bitten by the snake. It’s not the bite that kills you; it’s the venom.

Yeah, I know, the first-born is usually the anal worrier, but somehow my brother and I reversed roles on that. He’s chill and I stress—about grades, parents, ruptured appendices, venomous snakes, leprosy, girls, global warming, the national debt, the meaning of life, the meaning of death…

Stick to your charms, they give the illusion that some beauty resides in you somewhere. Insecurity shows the real serpent you are and you are in this moment a venomous snake.

Roosevelt, still wearing his heavy, hobnailed boots, watched as the snake’s short fangs plunged into the tough leather and spilled its venom down the side of his boot. He had been spared an agonizing, certain death by a quarter-inch of leather.

For decades, Haast has been immunizing himself to elapid (like cobras, kraits and coral snakes) venom by regularly injecting a very dilute cocktail of venoms. The process is called mithridatization after King Mithridates VI of ancient Turkey who was apparently the first to try it.