A snake is a snake to a snake-eating snake
Friday marked two weeks from the first date I had with Purring Robot. So yesterday I gave him a page from one of the old books I'd bought to tear up and collage. It's from the "snake" page of a Funk and Wagnall's animal encyclopedia, and the best part is a photo of a two-headed snake that used to live at the San Diego Zoo. The heads were named "Dudley" and "Duplex." Unfortunately, the heads would try to eat each other, and evenually the whole snake died as a result. Which makes me wonder how they could have kept the heads apart--it's not like separating rowdy kids on the playground. And making the heads wear those sort of Elizabethan collars they put on dogs who have just had surgery seems unmanageable as well--I mean, where exactly is the neck on a snake?
Anyway, I was afraid that he might find the symbolism disturbing, but instead he read the whole page to me, including the line that graces this entry. I hadn't realized that snakes were cannibalistic. There was one story about a kingsnake that resolved a conflict between two smaller snakes over a frog (each had a leg) by swallowing the frog itself. As well as the other two snakes.
Being digested must suck. Or squeeze. Or something.
I'm really happy I'm dating a man who can accept a picture of a two-headed snake in the spirit in which it was given.
The rest of the weekend was a flurry. Driving around in a borrowed car, eating homemade goat's-milk ice cream at D's, working model jobs, watching PRobot drink a truly astonishing amount of tea so black you couldn't see through it. In addition to the goats (the youngest of which make a sound indistinguishable from a human's child's crying, their long narrow grey tongues extended past the tinist teeth) D and her husband are now raising a pig for an eventual special guest appearance at the dinner table.
That thing people are always saying about how pigs are actually very fastidious creatures? Woo ha ha ha ha ha ha. We had to hose off our arms after we went to see the pigs, who were all but chewing each other's ears off. Their noses are a lot harder than they look, and can retain a great load of snotty mud to wipe off on silly city people who get too close.
Today more wild animals; Snufkina and her boyfriend have two new shar-pei puppies that I went to meet AND Almeida and I went to Costco. Getting in there, wow; we stalked people leaving the store until we found an abandoned cart.
Looking down from a certain angle, I am suddenly aware that there's a fair bit of crap stuck in my keyboard. Mostly double chocolate Milano crumbs, probably. Where is my keyboard-cleaning nanomachine?
