Show and Tell...
Show and Tell…
We had a variety of pets growing up. One of my favorites was our black indigo snake, named Sam, which I pronounced Ssssssssssam.
One day in kindergarten, Ms. Schwartz said we would have Show and Tell the next week. That we should bring a pet in that fits inside a shoe box. I immediately thought Sam would be great.
I packed Sam into the biggest shoe box I could find, but he didn’t like it and kept coming out. You see he was 6 feet long and all coiled up he barely fit in the box. By the time I was in the school bus heading to P. S. #5, he was wrapped around my shoulders with his head next to my right ear darting his tongue in and out excitedly checking out the whole scene.
Arriving at the classroom everyone was in a single line in front of Ms. Schwartz holding their shoe box. She would acknowledge the student and open the box to see what each person had brought.
It was a combination of hamsters, gerbils, turtles, ferrets, lizards and one praying mantis. When it was my turn she lift the lid, yet the box was empty. Without looking up she asked, “So what do you bring?” I said, “My snake named Sam.” Still looking down and searching the box she said, “Like a small gardeners snake… where is it?” I said, “He wouldn’t stay in the box.”
At that point she looked up and there was Sam right next to my head flicking his tongue. Ms. Schwartz looked up, yelped and passed out falling to the floor. I jumped down in my knees and grabbed her hand and was tapping it. “Oh please Ms. Schwartz please wake up.” She began to recover and when she was back, she saw Sam again, yelped and passed out again.
Kids were screaming. The teacher across the hall came running in and quickly assessed the situation. She told me to go stand in the far corner of the room with my snake. She then picked up the phone on the wall and called for the nurse.
A few minutes later Ms. Schwartz had recovered and was sitting up. After regaining her composure she told me I had a special assignment… for the day. I was to go to every classroom in the building and show them my snake and to not return until school was over. Sam and I had an excellent day going from room to room.
Time went by, as it does. A few years later Sam stopped eating. We usually fed him a combination of some salad and a meatball. But he didn’t want them anymore. My older brother came up with the idea that Sam was tired of dead food and wanted some live prey to eat.
So we all piled into the Oldsmobile and drove over to Green Acres mall in Valley Stream, NY. It was one of Long Island’s first open air malls built in 1956 on part of Curtiss Airfield. In 1968 the mall had a roof installed and became an enclosed mall and is still there today.
We went to JC Penny, which had a pet department on the lower level. We decided Sam wanted a mouse. There was a big glass “fish tank” filled with mice. My older sister identified the right mouse and it took the store clerk several attempts to grab the correct one. My sister was very insistent on which one.
The mouse was handed to me to hold. It was very small in my hand. I held it very gingerly and stoked his head with my finger. As we approached the cashier my mother turned to me and said, “Don’t tell her it’s for your snake or she won’t sell it to us.”
The cashier said, “That will be 5 cents… and isn’t that cute, a little boy with his mouse.” I piped up, “It’s for my snake!” The cashier said, “WHAT!?” My mother quickly interjected, “He’s such a kidder, he’s just messing with you.” While saying this she gave me a little kick in the shin. The cashier said, “Okay… and young man that wasn’t funny.”
When we got home we brought the mouse to Sam’s glass tank home and dropped the mouse in. The mouse immediately ran to the far side of the enclosure and using the chopped up leaves base built a half igloo to hide behind. Meanwhile Sam coiled up for his instinctual strike. He moved in, tongue dancing… then striked!
To my surprise he had completely missed the mouse by several inches. He actually struck his head on the glass wall. He seemed a bit dazed or concussed. Slowly he regrouped, recoiled, set up and struck again, also missing the mark and hitting the glass wall again. This time Sam did not recover… he was dead.
The mouse came out and sniffed and checked and understood the snake was dead. And just like David and Goliath, the mouse stood up, put one paw on the snake and raised his other one up to us in a high-five gesture.
Thirty years later I’m know living in Venice Beach, CA. My daughter, Sasha is almost three and we are off to our local Chinise restaurant on Washington Boulevard to pick up dinner.
Sasha loved this place because they had a huge fish tank in the front area. I would hold her up high and she would stick her head over the top. At that point all the fish inside would look up towards her and swim to that end of the tank. She would then pull away and direct me to the other end of the tank and repeat the process. Again was the fish saw her they all swam down to that end. My guess was they must think “someone is about to feed them.”
Yet when we face the tank the fish just swim about randomly. I then noticed and realized that the fish tank looks like it is mirrored on the inside, so the fish just see reflections of themselves, rather than all these people’s faces looking in. This effect is due to the internal lightning of the tank.
In that moment of realization I knew what happened to Sam thirty years ago. He was striking at the mouse he saw in the reflection of the glass… poor Sam. He might have survived and flourished if he knew this or at least had some sunglasses.