Snake Cut

“Snake! Snake!” – The children scattered. The high octave warning would do that. It caused our eyes to dart left and right, hearts pumping loudly against eardrums as the adrenalin surged. That startling call was able to interrupt us even when we were making much louder noises with our calcium carbide-mixed-with-spittle and shaken-in-an Ovaltine tin bombs.

“Snake! Snake!” – The children scattered. The high octave warning would do that. It caused our eyes to dart left and right, hearts pumping loudly against eardrums as the adrenalin surged. That startling call was able to interrupt us even when we were making much louder noises with our calcium carbide-mixed-with-spittle and shaken-in-an Ovaltine tin bombs. Come to think of it what a nice, long winded name for those ‘harmless’ bombs.

“Snake! Snake!” The alarm call would ring! Stay and get closer for a glimpse as it slithered on its menacing way? Or should I trust the others to keep it in sight, run for the cutlass and be the one to make the heroic kill?

Chop! Chop! The bomb making would have to wait. You see, not a single snake was ever allowed to get away. After all, wasn’t it a well-known fact that all snakes were out to do only one thing? Snakes in Queen Street, Kitty Village were poisonous, every last one of them! Viper or no viper! That’s what they were and they remained so until they were dead, dead and couldn’t bite you. Each and every Kitty snake was within reach of a cutlass chop. “Chop! Chop! Chop iittt!” The unanimous chorus could be heard almost to the end of Queen Street.

“Is it poisonous?”

“Kill it and see! Better safe than sorry!”

“A bite is truly a horrible fate! Remember how poor ‘little Ali’ met his grave?”

That is how it was with snakes as I grew up in Kitty during the 1960s and 1970s. The village was just east of the capital, Georgetown. Kitty faced the tropical North coast of South America in British Guiana, soon to become Guyana. Those days there was no TV at home or in the whole country for that matter. There were no National Geographic or Discovery channels and so our curious childhood minds were saturated with other matters from other sources. Matters like the ignorant fear of Adam’s mortal enemy. This fear was cultivated in us as a matter-of-fact live or die issue! Much the way preachers would scare the living daylights out of their flock with stories of fire and brimstone. You could smell sulphur I swear. Truly earnest voices, emphasizing words like ‘eternal’ to press home the case. Boy, I tell you it was more than real!

Snakes were evil I learnt in and out of church. They resembled the devil and were any good Christian’s enemy. One look at the pictures in my Sunday school book and it was clear what one of them had done to poor Adam and Eve and me and my Mortal Sin! Snakes were evil. This was a fact. It was outright plain and straight.

My family were staunch members of The Holy Rosary parish church on David Street. “Heaven and Hell exist right next door to each other,” my mother explained! “Like the top and bottom floor in a house.” So, in the middle of the night, it was little wonder I used to have recurring dreams of hellish snakes crawling up into my bed… from somewhere down below. Some nightmares were so realistic I’d wake, jump out of bed and dash, terrified, into the kitchen for the comfort of the cold cutlass blade. It always stood just there by the back door. Many a minute into the night, did the young me sit feeding lucky mosquitoes. It was always awhile before I managed to forfeit the cutlass for bed and the exclusion of the mosquito net. I had a lot of convincing to do to myself that it had been only a dream.

Snakes are prevalent all over Guyana, not only in Kitty or next door Georgetown. This Land of was full of them I learned as me and my fear, now almost a phobia, grew older.
“None of our Snakes are man-eaters either!” I heard.

“Except for the camoodie!”

“No, the anaconda you mean!”

Anaconda? Camoodie? No one in Guyana seemed able to tell me the difference between the two. Were camoodies the ones that visited town while the more dangerous sounding anacondas ruled the bush? One thing was certain. They looked exactly the same to me. My Dad comforted me with a recipe on how not to be swallowed by one of them. Simply press your fingers through the eyes straight into its brain!

Everybody knew camoodies and anacondas and other snakes loved places like sugarcane fields where there were mice and other small creatures to satisfy their sweet tooth. The reason, I was told, why all cane fields were burnt before the cane cutters went in. So fierce were many of those fires, that ash, borne on the Northeast Trade Winds, often sailed out of the eastern sky into Kitty. It was a common place thing that happened at least twice a year.

“They killing snakes!”

“The sugar ripe now!”

“Boy oh boy! I sure could drink some cane juice, couldn’t you?”

Off we’d go to Kitty Market to satisfy our sudden thirst.

There was always a season for the many tasty things that grew in Guyana. The wind borne cane field debris meant we were properly satisfied we knew what was going on. It was now cane season. Time to drink cane juice!

I grew up before I knew it, and without a second thought, I was giving up my budding teaching career at Saint Stanislaus College for my dream job as supervisor of Kabawer Ranch. Ha! Assistant Ranch Manager! Problem was Kabawer was on the Abary River, real Diamond Back Rattle Snake and ANACONDA country. I soon discovered I hadn’t forgotten those horrid childhood dreams when I stepped through my back door only to meet an eighteen-footer camoodie. It was half way up my back step!

No chop, chop with cutlass this time, just a double barrelled shot gun. Boom! Boom roared the weapon John Dickson of Princess Street Edinburgh had made! I emptied both barrels before getting a grip on myself. As soon as I was convinced the serpent would no longer swallow me, out came my skinning knife. The big anaconda’s skin was to become my first trophy. The rest went into the canal for the piranhas and caimans to eat.

“I be curious if yuh nah come across Snake Cut?” My foreman Harry, the leader of the cowboys, asked shortly.

“Once yuh gat deh Snake Cut yuh done deh off limits to any snake,” he declared. Spitting into the canal for emphasis.

All the other cowboys expected me to have it. Snake Cut was a powerful thing. A promise for a long life. They were convinced. Anyone who walked on Blairmont’s dams, between the canals or lived further south like us on the Abary River had heard about Cutman and his magical, white powder, called Snake Cut. Never mind he’d never been actually seen. Harry didn’t even know his name.

“What exactly do you do with the Snake Cut, Hugh?” Georgetown friends asked. “Drink it? Eat it? Smoke it? Put it in bites? Do you just carry it around as a talisman? The questions piled up. Was it made deep in the jungle by them bush Africans in Surinam? A friend, John, had even seen their advertisement sign at the Witches Market over there in Paramaribo.

“The best and greatest place for Snake Cut cures this side of the Equator.” It proclaimed.

“No snake can never bite yuh now.” Harry proclaimed as I paid him for my Snake Cut, a greyish white powder in a medical vial. I was stifling an inward snicker aimed at all this superstition. I proceeded as instructed to drink a little of the brittle powder that Harry mixed with pure alcohol spirits. ‘Cutman’ Harry also rubbed some of the mixture between the toes of both my feet. The rest was left in the vial which I was instructed to keep with me on my person always. This I did.

It’s funny and strange how psychology works. Even though I’d had my Snake Cut more to ‘fit in’ with Harry and the cowboys rather than out of a firm belief in its supernatural powers my Snake Cut soon began to work its magic. I evolved from being panicky around snakes to being wary. Was it the Snake Cut alchemy working, or was it just a case of familiarity breeding contempt? Snakes, especially rattle snakes, Diamond Back rattle snakes were everywhere at Kabawer. Caiman and camoodie fighting to the death was also a common sight.

A month or two later, the Abary River was in flood. We canoed up to a small bit of higher and dry ground. Sure enough, we heard the unmistakably sinister sounds of tails rattling. Within sight there were at least six of them! I felt none of the ‘old’ familiar panic as they menaced us with flicking tails and cocked heads. I didn’t even kill a single one of them! An unheard of act of mercy from the likes of me and my double barrelled shotgun. But, that was me pre-Snake Cut days. Whatever had happened to my old philosophy about the only good snakes being dead snakes? Were they spared because they weren’t actually on Kabawer Ranch land and so not a direct danger to our animals? Was my mercy tied to a lack of profit? We paid good money for snakes killed on the ranch. We were always loosing cattle to snake bites. Kabawer rattles were a nice bonus to wages. A note in my expense register from Monday 4th May 1981 said. ‘Ganash Puran – 1 rattle snake, $2.00. Snake box full! Six-hundred rattle snake tails.

Snake Cut or no Snake Cut, I never stopped being more scared of anacondas than rattlers. In those life-or- death struggles against caimans the results were almost always in the camoodie’s favour. As for the six-meter one I’d blasted away at the bottom of my back stairs, I skinned it and salted it and it stank to high heavens for weeks on my living room wall before it finally dried. I’m sure I can still smell it! I kept this trophy proudly displayed at every ranch I was posted to by LIDCO thereafter. Right to the day I said good day to ranching. The anaconda stayed on the wall but my Snake Cut vial came with me. Who’s afraid of snakes? Me? No, certainly not me! I got me Snake Cut.