This time it is a snake. A dead one.
Strange, but true: I found this the day after starting my Snake in the grass post.
At first, I thought it was just the skin, that the snake had moulted. But no, is was a dead - and rather smelly - small snake. Surely, I thought, snakes don't just die in the middle of fields, bent back on themselves. So now I think a bird dropped it. Maybe one of those birds of prey that was getting harassed by crows. Or maybe it managed to sting whomever caught it? Or maybe someone saw it and killed it with a stick. Its back looked broken.
It may have been an adder, our only venomous snake. There have been bad bites to dogs in the county. Maybe one every few years. And they seem to be pretty bad - almost fatal.
The snake in my world is the possibility of doing my dissertation next year. I have to hand in an idea (which seems to be 'important', possibly part of the mark) by June 25th. Thanks for the warning, guys.
What I want to write on are the ethics of human-animal-bonds: looking at labs, farms, pets and on a 'wider' scale... like indigenous hunters... animals as part of the community. I will resist 'rights' and might take a consequentialist approach combined with an appreciation of the value of relationality... as a step to expanding the circle... without 'prescribing' a particular 'scale' of interests.
This means I need to write to Ben. Who I think has had about enough of me.
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