LITTLE ROCK — Dear Otus,
Why is it somebody always has to bring a snake to Bless the Animals day at church and ruin it for everybody? My cat, Mr. Bitey, won’t come out from under the bed now because of the giant snake last Sunday in Maumelle.
- Constance Raleuse Maumelle
Dear Constance,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and a pleasure to assuage your misgivings.
Truth be told, there have been only a half dozen snake incidences in the past 10 years at the hundreds of Blessing of the Animals ceremonies across the state.
The last incident of note was in Springdale in 2009 and, to be fair, only one small western rock hopper penguin named Mumble was lost to the 20-foot, 206-pound African rock python before it slithered off into Lake Fayetteville.
That critter remained at large for three months before being captured by a team from Discovery Channel for the series Python Busters.
The Blessing of the Animals celebrates that great benefactor, St. Polycarp of Smyrna, who, in his letter to the Episcalopians, wrote, “If thou could walketh with the animals, talketh with the animals.”
That’s the New Revised Standard Modern Living Jerusalem Bible translation (1996) of the original Endocrine via Greek.
St. Polycarp’s Feast Day (the first waning gibbous following the first full moon in October) is celebrated as a sort of “fun” day in many denominations. Church members bring their cats, dogs, hamsters and gerbils to be blessed. In many cases, children bring more unusual pets such as frogs and goldfish.
In recent years, there has been an increase in exotic pets.
St. James United Methodist Church in Little Rock is still buzzing about 2001when someone brought a large green-crested palm cockatoo that objected to being sprinkled with holy water and spent a month in the rafters.
Four years ago at Little Rock’s St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, a Shetland pony with a faux unicorn horn and three 90-pound Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs arrived to be blessed.
That same year, Our Lady of Perpetual Perpetuity in Little Rock blessed a rare South American Araucana chicken and a pet turkey vulture.
And last year, Trinity Episcopal Church in Van Buren blessed six llamas, a brace of Charolais cattle, a three-toed sloth, a lesser Antillean iguana, and an albino armadillo named Pedro.
In Sunday’s incident at Maumelle, the oddest creature to be blessed was a mascot.
Nagini is the 210-pound, 15-foot, 19-year-old Myanmarese (formerly Burmese) python who’s the mascot of the Boy Scout Troop 295 Herpetology Venturing crew in Maumelle. The troop raised her from a neonate, feeding her rats and chickens.
Nagini has been at every animal blessing since 1999 without incident. This year, however, the ceremony was taken over by North Little Rock’s St. Patrick’s Catholic Church.
For years, the Maumelle blessing on the shores of Lake Willastein had been the responsibility of the Primitive Apostolic Holiness Church of the Devine Annointed Apostle of Christ in Glory in Vilonia. But that church was damaged in the April tornado and passed the baton this year.
Perhaps it’s because of St. Patrick’s noted connection with banishing Irish serpents, but Nagini was noticeably irritable and peckish during the ceremony.
When the holy water was splashed on Nagini’s head by Father Franklin DuPriest, the snake whipped her tail, sending two Scouts flying from the park’s gazebo near the pedestrian bridge.
According to witnesses, Nagini slithered into the water, passed under the footbridge and disappeared into the inlet behind the homes on Hibiscus Drive.
Authorities feel the snake is still in Lake Willastein, most likely in the deep woods between the lake’s two arms or in the murky shallow water near Nimrod Cove.
The good news is that Nagini fed just two weeks ago and won’t be hungry for another three weeks.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that if you spot Nagini, call authorities and do not attempt to capture her by yourself.
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Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of humorous fabrication appears every Saturday. E-mail:
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