As Werner Herzog’s GRIZZLY MAN and The Crocodile Hunter have proven, in the game of man vs. nature, nature always has the upper hand, no matter the confidence or skill of its opponent. Jamie James offers another example in THE SNAKE CHARMER: A LIFE AND DEATH IN PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE.
His nonfiction work begins where the story of his subject ends: In 2001, renowned herpetologist Dr. Joe Slowinski was on a snake-hunting scientific expedition in the Burmese jungles when he absentmindedly reached into a sack containing two snakes and was bitten by one of them. “That’s a fucking krait,” he said, referring to the reptile — a small, but deadly creature whose venom soon took Slowinski’s life.
Before a story can become a true tragedy, however, backstory must be told, so James does, beginning with James’ generally happy childhood, despite his parents’ divorce. From early on, Slowinski was enamored of animals, keeping boa constrictors and tarantulas as pets. When he turned 16, he was less interested in earning his driver’s license and more interested in volunteering for scientific expeditions. On his very first one, he was bitten by a rattlesnake, and had to walk two miles for help, his hand swollen black when he reached aid.
Predictably, by the time he enrolled at the University of Kansas, snakes were more on his mind than girls, and he gave all his waking hours to their study. This obsession grew to the point where he became rather cavalier at handling them, sometimes throwing those he has just collected into a bucket in the corner of his room, and then going to sleep on the floor beside it.
This casual treatment almost proved to be his undoing during filming of the 2000 National Geographic special COBRA HUNT in Burma, when Slowinski was bitten by a venom-spitting cobra in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, the snake had unleashed two streams of venom toward him before striking, so Slowinski’s bloodstream was spared the fatal toxins. The stressful situation, however, was compounded by the simultaneous mental breakdown of a graduate student he had brought along.
But it would be the 2001 return to Burma that would mark the end of Slowinski’s life by the creatures to whom he devoted that life. This final expedition takes up about the last 80 pages of the book — chillingly, as if James is teasing you as he builds up again to that unfortunate accident.
This time, it’s imbued with more detail, and we see how Slowinski’s system gradually shuts down, exactly how he tells his fellow scientists it will. By the time he scrawls a “Let me di—” on a piece of paper and doesn’t even have the energy to write the last “e,” your heart’s already been broken. News of his death shocks his parents and sister, but seems even more surreal when the World Trade Center is brought down by terrorists as the phone calls are being made.
Part biography, part travelogue, this account of a true eccentric will keep any science-minded adventurer enthralled. James’ narrative is rarely dry, not bogged down in boring details, focused on crafting a portrait of yet another varied and valuable life, taken too soon. —Rod Lott
“Like all male snakes, kraits possess a pair of penises, called hemipenes (‘half penises,’ from the traditional, erroneous belief that they combined to make a whole). The hemipenes inflate when inserted into the female; in some species, hemipenes are forked or spined, to ensure that they stay inside the female during what can be a long mating session — up to twenty-five hours for Crotalus atrox, the western diamondback rattlesnake.”
Related posts:
- Snakes on a Sudoku
- Death’s Head
- Blood & Thunder: The Life & Art of Robert E. Howard
- Death Head Crossing
- The Chemistry of Death
