I
recently read a newspaper report about a seventeen-year-old girl who
is an expert snake trainer. The sight of snakes may fill us with fear,
but this girl sleeps and eats with them every day. She holds them close,
embracing not just one, but dozens of them, all at once. And some are
deadly. But she is accustomed to them, for her father fed her some snake
venom in lieu of milk when she was just born. (Master laughs.) As she
grew up, this became a habit. Now she has developed such a strong immunity
to snake venom that snakebites will not take her life.
Snakes
are her constant companions. They stay very close to her, and the girl
sometimes holds their heads in her mouth. The snakes slither onto her
face, kissing and licking her, and sometimes, at her deliberate provocation,
bite her until she bleeds. If the venom is too much, she sucks it out
and spits it away. She cannot sleep unless she has enjoyed some snakebites.
Can you believe anyone having such a habit? But this is a true story.
It
is common among snake breeders, who are also called artists. It may
be weird, but it is an art anyhow. There are many weird arts in the
world; the weirder they are, the more popular they become. In contrast,
normal people like myself are not very well-known. (Master laughs.)
The way she is dressed tells you that this woman is only seventeen or
eighteen, but she is already an expert snake trainer in her neighborhood.
She performs the art as a living. She has grown so accustomed to snakebites
since infancy that she loses sleep if she has not been bitten. However,
people are afraid of her because she has become as venomous as these
creatures. This is a fact. She leads a lonely life. She reckons that
perhaps no man would have the courage to marry her.
When
she touches or plays with the dogs, cats or birds that occasionally
approach her, they drop dead as soon as she accidentally scratches them.
Just as we get poisoned when we are scratched or wounded by animals,
this girl causes death to animals when she scratches them, because she
is filled with venom. Even her nails are poisonous. This is very frightening!
It is not her blood or the venomous discharge from her body that infects
the animals. Nor does she bite them until they bleed. No! The animals
die from mere scratches. This has occurred several times. So people
are very afraid of her. Fortunately, however, she says that she has
never hurt a human being.
It
is good for her that her immunity has increased during the many years
she has spent in the company of snakes. But her body has to have sufficient
toxin to develop that type of immunity. It is like injecting a toxin
in the form of germs (a vaccine) into our blood so that we become immune
to a disease, that is, fighting poison with poison. The same is true
for this girl, who has absorbed snake venom-either through oral feeding
or injection-since she was a baby. Her father trained her to be an expert
snake tamer from the time she was a child, keeping her in close company
with snakes, the way we are with dogs and cats.
Snakes
are harmless and non-aggressive, she says. Although they attack when
disturbed, they are usually harmless. She often lets snakes bite her
and goes to bed only after enjoying a few snakebites. How horrifying!
Even though she sucks out the venom if it is too much for her, a small
amount is still left inside her body. Such daily intake, and the snake
venom she has absorbed since childhood, has turned her into a poisonous
snake. A scratch from her, however unintentional, is enough to kill
an animal. This is the result of developing an immunity to snakes, just
as we survive by becoming similar to the person we want to be with.
The only difference between this girl and a snake is that she knows
she would never intentionally bite or wound other humans, whereas snakes
do not.
Next
