THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 11, 1994 TAG: 9409100095
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 38 lines
When it comes to snakes, some folks just go all to pieces. A number of politicians and landowners right here in Chesapeake apparently are that way.
Biologists came to Northwest River Park to do what biologists do, to seek out biota in its natural habitat and try to learn what they can about it. The object of their scientific curiosity is the canebrake rattler, a critter that, though quite plentiful in many parts of the country, is so rare in Virginia that it's on the state's endangered species list.
But scarce as they are in these parts, in the opinion of some, they're not nearly scarce enough.
A program conducive to the proliferation of venomous serpents, they say, has no place in a public park.
Study the rattlers? Heck no. Hack them all to bits with a grubbing hoe!
Snake-hysteria rose to a fever pitch when Del. J. Randy Forbes likened the biologists' work to finding a loaded gun lying in a park. ``You wouldn't pick it up and look at it, then put it back . . . where you knew children were playing!'' he shrieked.
Considering all the icky things that proliferate in the outdoors - chiggers, poison oak, toadstools and so forth - perhaps we'd be better off to move all our parks indoors. If you like the idea, write Del. Forbes.
But if you believe that natural things - snakes, even - have their place in the world, or that man, with his gift of intelligence and rationality, is capable of coming to terms with the rest of creation, chances are you're going to be disappointed in the way this situation plays out. by CNB