But then my colleague, Spirro, came in and I showed her and she thought we should move it. We slid a manila folder under the box. But when we were trying to lift it without letting the salamander out we first cut off a part of its tail, which kept twitching for a while. And then--so terrible--we accidentally guillotined edge of the box down on its neck. At that point, Spirro said to me “You’d better go into the other room and I’ll finish this.” I guess I wasn’t helping much.
She came to find me later and I asked if it was still alive. She said something like “not really”, and told me it had a shiny silver underbelly. She’d put it out the window.
The whole thing reminded me of social realist novels I read in high school, where there’s a misunderstood outsider who some idiot gets scared of and through an out of control sequence of events the whole thing degenerates into some awful bloody tragedy
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4 comments:
I'm like that with spiders...I don't know how I got that way, but I turn into jelly around them.
Well, at least one of the last sights the salamander saw was your lovely face, maybe he thought 'I'll die happy' - amelia
I thought those salamanders were snakes at first sight, too (except, I thought it was cute).
Sorry about your debacle. I know it can be traumatizing. About a year ago I got up in the middle of the night (I'd been subjected to a cat murder on Hatzionut earlier in the evening) and STEPPED on a ginko. Ugh. I must have washed my foot for ten minutes. Unfortunately there's no 'memory wash' - I couldn't get it out of my head. I cried the whole time I was washing my feet (and Mark carefully extracted what was left of it from our home).
Lafeministe
Sashwee, You don't know how I laughed and felt sorry for your sensibilites as regarding the fate of the salamander. Now as i read it, i am touched by your horrified but gentle nature.
I hope I did not instill such "hate" of snakes in you. When we moved to Liberia and I had three small children, I was terrified of snakes on my children's behalf. At our previous country, there were very few snakes that i ever interacted with. Helpful friends cautioned me to watch out for snakes in Liberia, so I did... Especially since your brother, was such and quiet and dirt loving explorer.
When we lived in Haifa at the bottom of the hill...on the fourth floor?? (I can't remember) a huge flying roach flew right in our kitchen window. I HATE roaches...I screamed, jumped up and down, and it seemed to notice because it flew right for me. I ran into the bedroom slammed the door and quickly put a towel at the bottom so it could not find it's way through. It was the size of my hand. My brave Safa eventually got it out...and after that we quickly got a screen for the window.
Your story made me laugh!
-Kristin
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