Gulegi on Trial

Regular readers may remember that Gulegi is the official name of my resident snake.

What kind of snake is Gulegi? He's what Virginians call a blacksnake--one word--and Cherokees call gulegi, a climbing snake. I've never got close enough to be able to search the Virginia Herpetological Society web site by the shape of his scales, or any faint shadings on his back, so that site doesn't help me pin a Latin name on him. (I've guessed Gulegi is "he" because he's bigger than his visitors, but in some animal species that's the mark of the female.) Based on information at the state's Department of Game & Inland Fisheries...

http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/information/?s=030030

...I think Gulegi may be what they're calling the Black King Snake, as distinct from the Black Rat Snake. His back is solid black; his underside is pearl grey. He's been living in the attic of the Cat Sanctuary as long as I've been living in the main part of the house--more than forty years--and shedding a skin a little longer every year. He's currently a little over four feet long; if a Black King Snake, he could grow almost twice his current size--which is generally considered impressive--in another twenty or thirty years. He has never bothered any human in any way. Mostly he avoids us. Years go by when I don't see the living snake, but only find the shed skin in spring.

Both my mother and my husband admitted that Gulegi "gave them the willies." I don't get that reaction at all. I grew up with this snake. I know that he doesn't want to get close to humans. I know he could chomp hard enough to break bones in a human hand that molested him. I know he's very, very good at staying out of humans' way so that he'll never need to bite anybody. He's not poisonous. Being a dry-land snake, he wouldn't even feel cold and slimy if he did let himself be touched; his skin would be room-temperature and dry, like a snakeskin purse. In theory I suppose an eight-foot-long snake whom I didn't know would be intimidating, even to me, but Gulegi has been so valuable for so long that he seems like family.

Most king snakes are mottled brown and tan. Apparently even the black sub-species are usually mottled black and grey. True black, even if it's only on the back, is rare. Gulegi is solid black above and pearly below. However, in size and behavior he seems to be a real king snake--peaceable toward animals he's not going to eat (king snakes can become pets), and a super-efficient hunter of other snakes.

Although the earliest name for my part of Virginia, "Moccasin Gap," is thought to refer to cottonmouth moccasin snakes (more than to the Cherokee trading post where people might have bought moccasins), and the greenery around my house "looks snaky" to visitors, Gulegi's family have been here for a long time...and we don't have other snakes. The blacksnakes like their space and don't tolerate any other snake, even their mates or young, in their territory for very long. I saw a black racer, once, and a water snake that might have been a moccasin, once, within half a mile of the Cat Sanctuary. Only once. I don't know which blacksnake ate each one, but they disappeared fast.

So, blacksnakes are very useful creatures to know. However, Gulegi's character has been impugned by humans who've heard all kinds of weird superstitions.

I've heard that all real humans, or at least real women, loathe snakes because God put enmity between the woman and the snake in the Garden of Eden. Bah, humbug...that wasn't a blacksnake. What all real women loathe is the Evil Principle that "serpent" represented. Gulegi is a natural animal, all-American, with no close relatives anywhere near the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

I've heard that blacksnakes will attack humans and domestic animals, which they're not big enough to eat, just "because they're evil...because a snake is the Devil." Bah, humbug, again. Gulegi was here when we had free-range baby chickens all over the yard. Many snakes like fresh raw chicken, but Gulegi never touched one of ours.

I laughed out loud when Oogesti, who heard many strange things while growing up in Lee County, asked whether I was afraid of finding Gulegi in my bed some night, or, if not, whether I was "in love with" him. Snakes aren't sexually interested in women.

There are those smaller visitors. Last week I saw one of them approaching the cellar. The smaller blacksnake, a good-sized specimen in (I presume) her own right, froze when she saw me. Not sure yet where Bisquit had hidden her kittens, I pressed my territorial advantage, hissed softly, set a brick across the path, and said, "No, friend, I'm sorry to be inhospitable but I don't want you in the cellar today." The snake looked at me and retreated into the hedge. Later in the day I found the kittens, not in the cellar, and moved the brick. But snakes, whose sense of smell is far superior to warm-blooded animals', don't have to see each other to find each other. I've seen this smaller blacksnake in the yard. She's not interested in kittens. She's interested in Gulegi. If it weren't mutual, she wouldn't be around.

Once, thirty-some years ago, I saw the blacksnakes mating in the orchard. The size disparity wasn't great, back then, and neither was much more than two feet long. What surprised me, and still does, that it was during an unusually warm Christmas break. Usually Gulegi receives visitors in April and May. I don't know whether the Christmas snakelets survived.

But a few years ago one of Mogwai's four-month-old kittens turned up with a big, deep, bleeding wound on either side of his little neck. Naturally Gulegi was not in sight, but the wounds matched the size of his head pretty precisely.

Which was why I didn't panic. If a venomous snake of that size had bitten a kitten that size, by the time the snake got out of sight, the kitten would have been starting to die. This kitten, Mitch, was hurt and scared but in no immediate danger.

Could Gulegi have swallowed Mitch? It might have been possible--snakes do manage to swallow things that are wider than themselves, and Gulegi obviously had been able to take the kitten's head into his mouth.

Had he wanted to swallow Mitch? Adayahi, a snake hater, reckons Gulegi spat out Mitch's head because Mitch's body would have been too wide to swallow. I wouldn't bet on that. He'd had the opportunity to devour the whole litter when they were smaller. Based on observations of his behavior during the past forty years, I think Gulegi prefers venomous snakes and vermin, as food, to kittens or chickens. I suspect the playful, curious kitten had pounced on the big snake's tail, and Gulegi had chomped him just to teach Mitch manners.

The Cat Sanctuary has lost several kittens...to feline enteritis. Mitch had lost a brother to this painful, incurable disease. He and his sister had shown symptoms. It's possible that the antibiotic ointment I swabbed on the bite wound, traces of which his mother and sister had licked off, was what cleared up the infection. It's even possible that the snake's corrosive saliva helped--in some parts of the world snakebites have been used to treat some kinds of diseases. Then again they'd seemed to be fighting off the infection anyway. All I know for sure is that, after the bite healed, Mitch became a big healthy tomcat. Being bitten by a blacksnake didn't do him any permanent harm.

After considering the evidence, I've ruled Gulegi and his friends and relatives welcome at the Cat Sanctuary.

Those not lucky enough to live with a blacksnake may, however, want to read Juniper Russo's advice. It's applicable to cats too...although cats, being smaller, are less likely to survive a venomous snakebite.

http://voices.yahoo.com/what-if-dog-gets-bitten-snake-11321298.html