Rattled

This week I was climbing the hills behind our house as I often do and ran into a rattlesnake, as I occasionally do. I was facing up hill at a 75 °angle when I heard the sound that has become familiar to me after more than a decade of traversing this terrain--the rattle. I turned to my right and about 5 feet away recoiling into attack mode (or defense mode, depending upon your point of view) was a rather large and stunning specimen...stunning in how perfectly blended into the terrain it was. Whether it was fear or quick thinking that suddenly propelled me backwards I cannot really say, but the next thing I knew I was tumbling downhill on my back through rock and brush. When I finally came to a stop, I was happy to see it was not in a vipers' den of family and friends of the rattler that had launched me on my unscheduled journey. It easily could've been.
As I got up, brushed myself off and hurried away, I said a little prayer to my God, Spinelli, thanking him for outfitting rattlesnakes with rattles. This was the fifth or sixth time in my nearly two-dozen encounters with rattlesnakes that the sound of the rattle saved me from being bitten. 
None of those encounters was more profound than the very first. I was hiking that day with faithful dog Marley, who had rounded a turn on the path before me. As I made the turn, I was confronted with a rattling serpent right out of my deepest, darkest nightmares. It was in the middle of the path on an incline about 5-7 feet in front of me and smack between Marley and me (the old adage about how it's always the second hiker who gets struck would occur to me later when I was safely home and breathing normally again). I did not want to call Marley to join me for fear of his getting struck, and there was no way I could get to him. So I slowly started backing down the hill, which immediately prompted Marley to skirt around the snake and join me in escape.
The truly amazing thing about the incident is that by the time I got back home I had formulated much of the first act of a play that had been rattling around (no pun intended) in my head for about five years. The play turned out to be Spinelli, in which Adam and Eve bring civil suit against God for not allowing them due process before throwing them out of the Garden of Eden. The play went on for a nice run at The Long Beach Playhouse after winning its New Works Festival. It opens with the testimony of the serpent, which allegedly led Eve astray in the Garden. That character, indeed the very writing of the play, was inspired by my cathartic run-in with that rattler that day. So I've had a soft spot for snakes ever since...well maybe that overstates it a bit. I'm not about to become one of those Arkansas snake handlers, but I'm not about to take garden hoe to one that wanders into the yard either. And I've actually swerved my car to avoid running over one or two.
Aside from serving as the unlikely muse for Spinelli, I also have come to regard the rattling of the snake as one of the more honorable behaviors of all species on the planet. This is an allegedly cold-blooded creature alerting an innocent victim of danger...virtually waving the "Don't tread on me" flag.  And oh, if only human beings were as considerate. There are a lot of them marching around with that yellow Gadsden flag these days. They were ubiquitous outside the Republican convention this week, as they are wherever Tea Party types gather. The flag is increasingly a sign of anger and resentment, and unlike the rattlesnakes I’ve encountered in the wild, a sign of aggression
I’m pleased to call on none other than Benjamin Franklin to corroborate my view that the symbolism of the rattlesnake has been grossly perverted (like that other badly abused symbol, the crucifix, turned on its head from symbol of loving sacrifice to symbol of burning vengeance). Ruminating on the merits of the rattlesnake as a possible national symbol of the United States in 1775, Franklin wrote:  

"I recollected that her eye excelled in brightness, that of any other animal, and that she has no eye-lids—She may therefore be esteemed an emblem of vigilance.—She never begins an attack, nor, when once engaged, ever surrenders: She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage.—As if anxious to prevent all pretensions of quarreling with her, the weapons with which nature has furnished her, she conceals in the roof of her mouth, so that, to those who are unacquainted with her, she appears to be a most defenseless animal; and even when those weapons are shewn and extended for her defense, they appear weak and contemptible; but their wounds however small, are decisive and fatal:—Conscious of this, she never wounds till she has generously given notice, even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of stepping on her.—Was I wrong, Sir, in thinking this a strong picture of the temper and conduct of America?"

Far too many of our fellow citizens are now all too eager to begin attacking, and they could care less about magnanimity, and know less about true courage. The most dangerous of them…fired by their avenging delusions–storm into our movie theaters, classrooms and grocery stores with guns a-blazing. The more annoying of them confront us at watercoolers at work, at cocktail parties, in ostensibly casual conversations in public places with the bile and outrage they’ve just consumed to excess on talk radio or cable news. They cannot wait to tell you exactly what they think and how wrong you are to think what you think. They’ve been practicing before empty chairs at home, and when they meet you they simply cannot adjust to another human being who will talk back…who will not be tread upon.
Their frustration with finding themselves in a country of diversity is to cut off that part of the country they don’t like…and to try and find some kind of validation for this behavior in the founding and history of the country. But it’s not there. Contrary to the neo-secessionists now overrunning the red states, Franklin did not see “Don’t tread on me” as a motto of State’s Rights. He saw it as a motto of union, as illustrated in his famous woodcut.

And writing further on the rattlesnake, he said:

 'Tis curious and amazing to observe how distinct and independent of each other the rattles of this animal are, and yet how firmly they are united together, so as never to be separated but by breaking them to pieces. One of those rattles singly, is incapable of producing sound, but the ringing of thirteen together is sufficient to alarm the boldest man living.

Those people waving the rattlesnake around as their symbol do the creature a grave disservice. A more appropriate symbol for their behavior would be this: