animal symbolism

Dear Readers,

I just had an interesting thought. I have just moved my chinchilla, Nibbler, into the room of my new apartment which I share with my boyfriend, who hates the chinchilla. My roommates also hate the chinchilla and the roommates own a cat who would like to eat him. It has proven to be an interesting, and by interesting I mean exhausting, circumstance. I digress.

My interesting thought was the idea of introducing my young snake, Zero who also resides in my bedroom, to the chinchilla to get him accustomed to rodents too large for him to eat. This is something I would never attempt with my adult snake, who as most of you know is unnaturally large for his species. This makes me think of why I would never attempt such a thing. It's not because he is so large or so powerful or really so threatening that to attempt it would bring certain death of the chinchilla. No, the chinchilla would probably cause more damage to the snake because he has never hunted anything alive in his life nor would a corn snake even attempt to take down anything larger than a young rat in the wild. What I think it comes down to is the image of a snake that has been ingrained into our subconsciousness.

In paganism a snake represents power and wisdom. There are very few animals that I won't handle when they are agitated. The only two that come to mind are snakes and horses. The only logic I can come up with is that horses can break your legs if they kick you correctly. So that leaves no real reason why a snake has earned such respect. Also, if asked which animal I thought was more intelligent I would probably say Jack and Zero over Nibbler, which makes very little sense, Nibbler knows his name, some basic commands and he can recognize a variety of different people and acts accordingly around them. The snakes only understand the basic rituals of feeding time and the reaction to a human hand entering their tanks. Even with Jack, who has had six years of conditioning, there is still some discrepancy to these conditions.

Biologically it has been proven that social animals such as dogs, chinchillas, humans (duh) have far more developed brains than solitary animals like snakes and cats and...uh...coke heads. So I guess my thesis to this long winded come back post is that social stigmas run deep.

Thank you ladies and more like gentlemen because I do believe that my dear James may be the only one who reads this.

Yours,
Jen

PS
I've been meaning to restart this blog for a few weeks. When I get around to it I have a delightfully cynical post about one of my last commutes to Humber College via GO train.
PPS
I'm planning to drop out. That would make for a pitiful angst ridden post worthy of high school. You will read no more about that tidbit of information.