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player ready...I was 9 when I trapped a footlong garter snake in a shoebox in the backyard of our Evergreen Park home. I tied a string around its head, hung it from my mother’s clothesline and stuck two straight pins into its body. Then I watched as it twisted and writhed.
Recalling the incident, I feel shame and repulsion. But back then I thought what I did was expected.
Snakes were evil. It was a serpent, after all, that tricked Adam and Eve into committing original sin, which started all the world’s troubles. At least that was truth conveyed by Sister Eucharista at St. Bernadette’s School. And it was dramatized in our Bible history book with an illustration of the fanged black serpent hanging from the apple tree, its face contorted into a conniving snake smile.
The lesson was reinforced by my mother’s horrified reaction to the green and black snakes that migrated through our grass and dandelions, and her “I hate snakes” proclamation.
Still, as I watched the snake die in the sun, I did not exactly feel I deserved a medal. Something in me sensed consciousness in the animal. Something made me wonder about its pain.
I would like to ask the same questions of the four young adults in Sarasota, Fla., who are still waiting since last July to find out if criminal charges will be filed after they posted a video on Instagram of their dragging a black-tip shark by the tail behind their speeding boat as the helpless creature crashed and bounced in the wake.
“Look, it’s already almost dead,” one of the men said in the 11-second video.
Their dastardly act was nationally publicized after they sent the video to Mark “the Shark” Quartiano, a Miami shark fisherman, who reposted the clip with the following caption: “For once I may have to agree with @PETA.”
Negative fallout went viral. Florida Gov. Rick Scott called the video “disturbing.”
The Florida Wildlife Commission has been investigating for months, eventually learning the culprits’ identities, including boat captain Mark Wenzel, 21.
And many animal sympathizers have been boycotting MTV’s reality show “Siesta Key,” all because the leading actor, Alex Kompothecras, 22, is a friend of Wenzel.
I have not hastened to join that group. After all, who among us has not tortured and killed innocent creatures? Who has not stepped on an unsuspecting ant, or swatted a fly that was not even trespassing?
And is anyone ever faulted for brutally killing a mouse, a rat, a skunk or a raccoon that is trying to find warmth and shelter in a corner of the basement or attic?
Where, exactly, do we draw the line? What’s the difference between nuisance animals deserving of automatic execution and those deserving of humane treatment?
When I lived in Wisconsin, the Department of Natural Resources lent me a contraption for catching and drowning a mother and her litter of baby skunks living behind the garage. Yet, I was subject to jailing if I harmed a black bear that had broken through a screen to get at the garbage pail in our kitchen.
Additionally, I have been on boats with other fishermen who have mistreated or destroyed carp, catfish, suckers, pufferfish and gar, acts that rarely launch FWC investigations.
Saltwater sportsman routinely split open perfectly healthy squirrel fish and large ladyfish in order to use the cut pieces as bait to catch “desirable” species — redfish, snook and cobia — species for which any mistreatment would draw public ire and criminal citations.
So if it turns out the authorities do bring criminal charges against the shark-draggers, their defense attorneys can point out that the questionable intelligence manifested by Wenzel and his crew only proves that they are gullible, innocent victims of confusing laws, misinformation and cultural indoctrination.
Think about it: Since the universally popular movie “Jaws” sparked worldwide fear, young men like Wenzel were led to believe that sharks were dangerous, deadly, voracious man eaters.
Though “Jaws” was released long before Wenzel was born, and we’ve become more educated about sharks (which average only 19 attacks per year in U.S., and only one fatality every two years), pop culture has persisted in their demonization, as manifested by wildly popular scare videos online and on cable TV, including “10 Unbelievable Shark Attacks” on YouTube or the 2016 sci-fi feature film series “Sharknado,” in which flying sharks threaten to destroy the civilized world.
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My intent is not to be an apologist for the shark-draggers. I wish only to pose a question: If the government and its legal experts need months to even figure out if laws were broken, isn’t our country in need of more sensible, clear and well-disseminated animal treatment laws and guidelines?
Former Oak Forest resident David McGrath is emeritus English professor, College of DuPage, and author of “The Territory”.