Courage Part One

Eleven years ago I told my then-partner that I wanted to get a pet snake and overcome my intense fear of slithery creatures. What did I get for Solstice that year? You guessed it. I didn't mean I wanted to get a pet snake quite so soon. It was more of an in-the-future idea and one that I expected to tackle myself, not through a holiday gift. At the time, I felt freaked out and slightly resentful, although simultaneously invigorated with what was probably adrenaline. All of a sudden I was responsible for this living being whose mere existence caused me heart palpitations and sweaty palms.

I named my snake Hygeiea and she was a wonderful companion. After about a year, she went many places with me, wrapped around my neck for warmth. She and I were connected, and I continued to explore my own associations with snakes and serpents as "male" in juxtaposition to ancient traditions of snakes representing femininity. During Hygeiea's growth spurts she would shed her skin once a month, during the same time I was menstruating. I felt a profound systerhood and strong Knowing during those times.

Additionally, the life-death cycle played out in my tiny one-bedroom apartment when my partner acquired another snake and we began breeding rats rather than buy pinky rats to feed our snakes from the pet store. Now, years later, I revisit the conflicting emotions of seeing the mama rat frantic, pressed against the glass, whiskers quivering, as we fed her babies to our snakes in the other room. It is an image that haunts me. Life-death-life-death-life. It was intense.

What ended up happening to Hygeiea, some time after that partnership ended, is another story entirely, and ultimately one of liberation and joy. But the experience of caring for her was perhaps the first time I realized that my inner strength and ability to delve into new, terrifying realms is deep, wide, and mysterious.

Where am I going with this? I'm not sure. But I'll dig deeper in the next post.

Dirty Eggs

me: Do the chickens push the egg out their vagina or their ass? Sometimes it seems like there is shit on the eggs when I gather them.

N: Chickens don't have vaginas or assholes. They have cloacae. It's an all-purpose hole. So yeah, there probably is some shit on the eggs, coming out of the all-purpose hole.

me: No chicken vaginas?

N: No chicken vaginas.

me: Hmm. . . How do the roosters fertilize the eggs?

N: A rooster has a cloaca too. So when a hen and a rooster mate, they rub their cloacae together for the fluid exchange. [Seriously - he used the words "fluid exchange." And my mind wandered into thoughts about rubbing holes together before realizing . . . .]

me: A rooster has an all-purpose hole too? So a cock doesn't have a cock? My mind has been blown.

+++++
Wikipedia says roosters don't have penises.
Some guy at Harv*rd says male chickens do have a small penis (buried in their all-purpose hole, I'm guessing.)
This Aussie site on chicken ("chook") breeding doesn't mention penises, just the all-purpose hole.
+++++

You know, I am not interested in the chicken-or-egg question. I AM interested in knowing how a penis came to be known as a cock if male chickens don't really have one, or if they do, it's buried in their all-purpose shit-semen-piss hole. Etymology of sex slang is fascinating. Or perhaps I just need to get some sleep.

Pondering . . .

. . . how these fit together:

Actions speak louder than words.


The pen is mightier than the sword.

More on this later.