"... except common sense,", so says Jim Harrison, Director of the Kentucky Reptile Zoo in Slade, Kentucky, "A venomous snake isn't a pet. You don't play with it. If you do, you're an idiot.", he concluded. You couldn't ask for it to be expressed with much more pith.
The internet is truly terrific, except when it's awful. In addition to being the Disinformation Superhighway, it is the place where any one can buy just about anything, including poisonous snakes. According to Fox News, the pastor of a church in Appalachia, James Coots, was rounded up along with about ten others as part of an illegal snake trade crackdown;
Coots, 36, is pastor of the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name in Middlesboro, where a Tennessee woman died after being bitten by a rattlesnake during a service in 1995. Her husband died three years later when he was bitten by a snake in northeastern Alabama.
The snakes were sent to the aforementioned non-profit reptile zoo, where Mr. Harrison was inspired to make his cogent observation on life in the internet age.
Anyone who wishes to remind us that Jesus said, "They will pick up serpents (with their hands), and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them," should first remember that Jesus also said, "Again it is written, 'You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.'"
Posted by: Mary | July 14, 2008 at 06:29 PM