All that is in a snake is the devil. The first agent of temptation, and the first to lead God’s creation to unspeakable sin. 

When I was twelve, my father chopped the head off a snake with his hoe. My friend and I took the carcass, nailing it barbarically to a slab of wood we had found in my garage. The snake was black and glistening in the hot sun, some four feet long and thin. We thought it was fascinating to see the inside of something that had just been alive, so we took our rusty box cutters and sliced it open from the tail up. I wore my father's oversized t-shirt and flimsy latex gloves, the ones you can smell when you take out of the box. We had no hesitation jumping right in, slicing through scaly, rough skin to reach the snake’s forbidden insides.  

The snake’s insides looked the same as the insides of a person you would see in an anatomy textbook, cartilage a light tan and tissue fleshy. Vertebrae was all the way up, traveling from its tail to its head. The snake’s nerves were still electrifying its body, making it slither like it was still on the rough grass. When we cut up to the snake’s heart, it was still pumping. It was a small thing, not even an inch long, but still drumming along. I considered how it looked like mine, fragile and pink and glassy from fluid.  

The snake slithered through my mind well into the night. We had tossed its body over the fence when we were done exploring, to be swallowed up by a passing turkey vulture, swaying low under the oak trees nearby. I thought, again, of its small heart. The heart was similar to mine, innocent and smooth. But I knew, although I refused to let it form a definite thought in my mind, that my innocence was limited. How much of my heart was tainted with jealousy, hatred, anger, selfishness? I was conscious that I was mean in the way a child often is. I took more candy than I should from Halloween bowls when the homeowners were not particularly focused. I was filled with unspoken envy when looking up to teenage girls, consumed by jealousy when thinking of their full hips and perfect hair. The snake did not have the conscience that I did. It had not struck my father with its fleshy fangs, and it had never tried to. Was its small heart big enough to hold the sin of man? 

What flashes in a snake’s head before death? Is it the kind of fear that a human would understand? Is it a sudden wash of terror, a freezing body and a thumping heart? I thought about the small pumping heart I had seen… how fast was it beating? Does a snake feel anger, a hatred for its sudden attacker? 

I considered what there was for me to be afraid of. The image of blood welling over a snake bite entered my head, the bright red of blood dripping down my arm onto my sheets. Another voice came to me then. Yes, the Voice said, but was he, the snake, not frightened as well? And I imagined God then, an omniscient presence lingering over my shoulder and in my mind.  

The best choice was to consult my father about my troubles. As my best friend and most trusted confidant, he would have the answers, I was sure. When you are 12 years old, you still lean on your father in such a way that his word feels Biblical. So, the next day, eyes still droopy from sleep, pajamas wrinkled and misshapen on a cool Saturday morning, I asked my father about the snake while he was sitting at our kitchen table reading the newspaper. 

 “Why did you kill the snake?” fell out of my mouth before “Good morning” could.  

He looked at me then, eyes unconcerned. “What are you talking about?” he asked, hair tousled and pajama pants covering his legs. I was angry now, feeling an odd sort of vengeance for the snake’s life we had taken so meaninglessly that my father could not even remember it. He glanced at me then, suddenly interested in what I might have to say.  

“The snake you killed and I cut open. Why did you kill it?”  

“Oh, that,” he said, unconcerned yet again. “Because it’s a snake,” he said, turning back to his newspaper on the coffee table.  

“Oh,” I responded, and then I did not want to talk anymore. I left the room.  

Because it’s a snake replayed in my head for days, gaining its own rhythm. A snake, which holds no value. A snake, which knows nothing of love or peace or God.  

I knew, with a human-like arrogance, that my father was right. How righteous, but superfluous, to give snake my grace. I had a smile and a laugh and a voice graced by God, who I knew well. I was crafted in Their image, after all.

And then on the most beautiful day with the brightest blue in the skies, I happened to open my family’s grill, looking for the occasional bird nest that we would find after weeks of not grilling burgers on the scorching grate. I wanted to see tiny bright blue eggs and gush at the thought of a life forming inside of them, or perhaps a frazzled mother bird squeaking and squawking to scare me away. But when I opened the grill, a long black coil stared back at me. 

I instinctively jumped away, the snake’s beady eyes glaring curiously up at me. It had been curled up, scales now glimmering black in the wake of pouring sunlight, much like the first snake we had killed. I froze, terrified of what it would do to me as if it could see inside my thoughts. It seemed the snake felt the same way, head deathly still and body still coiled into a small cone. Its eyes were glassy and round, open like mine. We were in a standoff now; who would strike first? Would I call for my father, or would the snake decide it was tired of fearing for its life in my fiery grill, choosing to become my assailant? 

The snake was still, stiller than me. The only evidence of life was an occasional tongue flick, perhaps wanting to understand me as desperately as I wanted to understand it. I considered which of us looked more frightening in the moment. I was huge and towering, a dark figure against the sunlight. But the snake was small and still and curled, a pathetic three inches wide and just a few feet long. 

I wondered about its lineage, of the snakes that came before it and of the snakes that might come after. From what I knew of snakes, they had no emotions and were instinctual creatures, eating when their body told them to and thinking little of anything else. They were not maternal or loving; they were automatic and callous. Their offspring raised themselves, most to be culled to the wild and never given the real chance to live. But this snake would not care because all it cared about was itself. The thoughts of its children, of their survival, would never cross the snake’s mind. What kind of value does a creature hold that cannot think or feel? 

No, the Voice said to me then, look around yourself and tell me of the value that you see. So, I listened and I looked inside and outside and all around, and in my mind conjured the image of the lush green of grass, the beautiful blossoms of magnolia trees during the spring. I saw sand rushing under my feet and wind toiling my hair and salt on my skin and sun on my face. Images of all the most valuable things in the world rushed to my mind, none of them with a brain or a thought.  

What a fool I was to be standing and thinking of myself as a superior creature to the one cowering below me, towering over him like the ultimate predator, my own fangs ready to strike. I was blaming this snake for the sin of man, for the sin of my ignorance and hatred and fear of things I do not understand. What good is man’s intelligence if it does not come with an understanding, or at least an immediate reaction of love to the world around it? I was walking on the snake’s soft grass with human arrogance pouring from my shoes. It was man who was unholy, the snake just another vivid creation of the God I thought I knew well. 

But if I had known God well, I would have known They were in everything I saw. Every rock and every tree and every insect. God had crafted every atom in that snake, every pearly scale and curious eye, both fleshy fangs and angry hiss. Had the snake and the rock not also felt the sun on their back and the coolness of a summer breeze? This snake was even made of the same fleshy pink as me, glowing and beating and trying to stay alive, seeming to say, Wait, God, let me have one more chance! 

I tried desperately to picture evil in the snake then, in its glimmering body.  

But all I saw was God molding every scale Themself.