Last Saturday Lyra was sad and I thought she might want to be back in the womb. So I strapped her to my tummy and walked along a foresty path towards the sea. The next best place I know to where she had come from. It was all going fine until I stopped with a fright and she started crying again. Even closer than a foot from us was a green snake. Just blatantly sliding around a tree.
So I said to her, in a lilty voice: that snake, is not a snake to be upset about. Even if it is poisonous. Because we can see that snake. Simply out and about on a tree. With it’s pretty spots and a very long tail.
I said that even if my friend Ernest is right and that snake is not what it seems, but in fact an ancestor come back as a snake to say hi, we still don’t need to be at all worried. Even fake snakes are okay, if you can see them. Even if our ancestors were scary and detached and depressed and really unaffectionate and mean, this was because they lived through hard times, like the war. And people who live through wars see the worst things and then they have shell-shock and post-traumatic stress disorder and go all numb and sometimes can only think about their own pain and then they kill themselves. So we must try and forgive them and be understanding, when they come to visit us.
And then I told Lyra about the time Ernest brought a python to my house in his van. He rang the bell and said, Jess, I have something to show you. So I went downstairs and there was an alive python and a dead goat. He said the python had gone into his neighbour’s house in the night and they wanted to kill it but they were too scared, so they phoned him for help. Luckily. Because Ernest knows you must never kill pythons. Pythons are Royal Ancestors. Instead you must kill a nearby baby goat. Then put them both into your van while you are at work and then later on set them free in a nature reserve.
Ernest knows all this because he really loves and understands animals. Including fake spirit animals. He said when he was child he used to watch cats all the time. So he could sit in a tree and pounce on birds and catch them. But he never ate them. He showed me so many pictures on his phone of animals he has rescued. Donkeys with sore ears, lots of three-legged dogs, half-dead pigeons. Even unhappy and lost cows. Pythons are just big and needy and a bit smothering in their affection. So if they hug you: don’t move at all. Don’t even breathe. Just ignore them. Then they will eventually let you go.
Even if you see a cobra, it is fine. They are just a little bit insecure and lonely. You just have to talk to them. My friend once told me about when a cobra came right up to her. It seemed to be very cross and put its hood up and hissed at her. But she just calmly said to the cobra, you don’t have to be so angry. You are a snake, but it isn’t your fault. Just like I am Aquarius and I can’t help that. You are very beautiful and you need to just chill. And after a while it calmed down and went off into the trees.
All of these snakes are okay, I said to her. Because we can see them. The only very bad snakes are called snakes in the grass. There really is no solution to these snakes and I don’t know what happened to make them such assholes. And they are always a surprise so there is no point in knowing about them in advance. Maybe you will never meet one and that will be wonderful. Because if you do, you won’t want to skip through a meadow of poppies with only your flip-flops on ever again. And that will be a very sad day.