By Jamie James
Although it used to be nonetheless too darkish to determine good, Joe absentmindedly thrust his correct hand into the sack to extract the specimen and take a look. instantly, he winced with soreness and yanked out his hand. A tiny black-and-white banded snake, lower than ten inches lengthy, was once dangling limply from his center finger, its fangs nonetheless sunk into his flesh.
In the autumn of 2001, deep within the jungle of Burma, a group of scientists is looking for infrequent snakes. they're led via Dr. Joe Slowinski, at 40 already essentially the most great biologists of our time. it's the so much bold medical day trip ever fixed into this distant sector, venturing into the foothills of the Himalayas. The daring venture is dropped at a dramatic halt by means of the chunk of the many-banded krait, the deadliest serpent in Asia. within the second he pulled his hand from the specimen bag and observed the krait, Joe knew that his lifestyles used to be in grave and approaching peril. therefore started some of the most notable desert rescue makes an attempt of contemporary occasions, as Joe's teammates saved him alive for thirty hours through mouth-to-mouth respiratory, watching for a rescue that by no means came.
A daredevil captivated with venomous snakes seeing that his formative years, Slowinski used to be a modern day adventurer who rose fast to the pinnacle of his box, gaining knowledge of many formerly unidentified snake species in his short but exhilarating profession. The Snake Charmer is instantaneously fantastic biography and unique commute literature, mixed with an available creation to the unusual, fascinating-and occasionally controversial-world of snake technology. The narrative transports the reader into primeval desert, from the Everglades to Peru to Burma, looking for rattlesnakes and boa constrictors, kraits and cobras.
Joe Slowinski's profession was once speedy and intriguing, his tragic ultimate excursion a pulse-pounding fight among guy and nature. In The Snake Charmer, well known journalist and writer Jamie James captures the lifestyles and dying of this charismatic, without end interesting guy. Exhaustively researched in interviews with Slowinski's colleagues and relatives, and the author's personal trek into the wilds of Burma, this is often narrative nonfiction within the culture of Into the Wild and The excellent Storm.
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Extra resources for The Snake Charmer: A Life and Death in Pursuit of Knowledge
Sample text
Adapted to living in dark, warm places, it took up residence in the pipes and heating ducts of the house. The family was on a permanent state of alert, at the ready to capture the fugitive. Occasionally, they would see it slinking away, its tail disappearing into a vent, or its head would materialize for a shadowy instant under the drain in the kitchen sink. Sometimes, at night, ominous thumps would emanate from the core of the house; then days would go by without a sign of the serpent. When Rachel’s guinea pig disappeared, she blamed it on the boa.
Thirty years later, Cozumel was overwhelmed by their progeny. Set free in a closed environment thickly populated by the snake’s preferred diet, yet void of the big cats and other large carnivores that prey on them on the mainland, the philoprogenitive boas numbered three thousand by 2003, when Jesús Rivas went there to make a film about this reptile irruption for National Geographic. He found an extraordinarily quiet jungle: The mammals that the boa preyed on, such as peccaries, raccoons, opossums, and coatis, were largely depleted; one of the three species of mouse that had inhabited the island for millennia had apparently become extinct.
I do not feel I was guilty of carelessness. ” Later, according to a biographical sketch by James Murphy and David Jacques published in the Herpetological Review, Wiley set up a roadside attraction in Cypress, California: a petting zoo where children could play with king cobras, kraits, copperheads, and rattlesnakes. She died after a cobra bit her while she was wrangling the snake for a photographer from True, a popular men’s magazine. She had some antivenom on hand, but before she could take it, someone accidentally broke the vial.