3 ANIMAL RELATIVES THAT SCARE THE SH*T OUT OF ME

I was once less than a foot away from a black mamba

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I’ll get to that story in a second, but I wanted to let you all know a few new exciting things happening with OutThereJCH.

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Now back to the black mamba!

All the Lemon Booty

I saw my first live black mamba in Atlanta in 2001. Two actually. They were behind the glass in the reptile house in the Atlanta Zoo and I was an incoming freshman at Morehouse College working with Dr. Duane Jackson. Dr. J took me on a tour of the zoo and because he was curator of invertebrates, I got to go behind the scenes.

I told Dr. Jackson that the black mamba was one of my favorite snakes and then he told me a story that made my blood run cold.

“You know, we had a guy here who looked after the mambas. He was really good and one of the few people in the country who could work witYeah, he quit after one of them bit him in the face.”

Dr. Jackson has a way of telling stories so matter of factly that it’s equally disarming and hilarious, no matter what the subject. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, he went on to explain that the former mamba curator spent 6 months in the hospital recovering and used up nearly $500k worth of antivenin supplies of two facilities to save his life.

He never came back to work and the zoo was, at the time, looking for another place that would keep the deadly danger noodles.

My booty hole puckers every time I think about this story and I only ever went to see the mambas once after.

By far the most dangerous snake in the world

Black mambas are not the most venomous snake species in the world. In terms of potency of their saliva, they don’t even crack the top ten of the most deadly tooth juice. Interestingly enough, the top ten most deadly venomous snakes all live on the Australian continent; the most deadly of which, the inland Taipan or Fierce Snake, lives far away from most humans and wants little to do with them.

Most snakes want little to do with humans actually. We’re too big to be prey for 99% of snakes and those large enough to eat us prefer animals with a smaller shoulder girdle. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go to your closet, pick up an empty hanger, and think about how big your mouth would need to be to swallow that hanger whole.

Black mambas have no interest in eating human beings, but Black mambas live in an environment where just about every large mammal, and some birds, could easily kill them. That’s why black mamba venom is so potent — one bite is enough to kill an entire herd of elephants — and why they are, by far, the most aggressive venomous snake in the world. If you were the size and shape of a garden hose and had to move through savannah and forests full of herds of rhinos, elephants, zebra, wildebeest, giraffes, hippos (they should have made this list, but I was too scared to type anything negative about them), and meat eating relatives, you’d better be a scary m*therf*cker.

The best defense is a relentless offense.

Did I mention that the black mamba is the second longest venomous snake in the world — up to 12ft long — behind the king cobra (up to 14ft, of which they can raise 6-7ft off the ground standing up)? Did I also mention that black mambas can slither at 12mph, which is nearly double the speed that an average human can run? Piss this snake off and you couldn’t even run from an asswhoppin.

This is the only time I’ve ever seen Jeff Corwin — one of the most experienced animal presenters on TV — look shook. Are you starting to understand why this relative scares me so much? I haven’t watched this clip since it aired on TV because it makes me break out in a cold sweat.

I love snakes. Always have. I think they are amazing relatives that are misunderstood by most people. But this snake is not misunderstood. It will kill you dead five times over, chase you down in the afterlife and kill you again.

Black mambas are like a beautiful nightmare that I hope I never ever see in the wild.

12 inches of nightmare fuel

Speaking of nightmares, the giant desert centipede is the only animal relative I know that gives me the absolute heebee jeebees. I have trouble looking at this photo and if I ever woke up with one crawling on my leg I would die from loss of blood after chopping my leg off.

This obvious hell spawn relative is, like all centipedes, a voracious predator armed with enough strength, speed, venom, and aggressiveness to harvest prey as large as rodents. I don’t know if you know this, but terrestrial mammals taking an L from a single arthropod is something we gave up for the most part millions of years ago. It usually takes a gang of exoskeleton relatives to take us out, but this mirapod has no trouble taking one of us out.

Now, consuming a mouse may not seem like a tall order, but remember mice, like many rodents, are capable of chewing through just about anything, including would be predators. And again, most mammals throw hands, teeth, and cunning like nobody’s business.

One of the reasons why venom evolved is so predators could kill dangerous prey, like rodents, quickly without injury. Giant desert centipedes have that, plus dozens of legs to grip and immobilize their prey before consume them.

LOOK AT THAT THING!!!!!

As an ecologist, I’m a bit embarrassed that this relative gives me the creeps, but I promise you, if I ever found a giant desert centipede in my tent I’d run screaming into the night and then come back with a blowtorch and anything in that tent would burn like I was an arctic geologist who just discovered a shape shifting alien under the snow (y’all get that reference?).

I’d rather be in the water with a great white shark

The closest thing we have to a megaladon is a great white shark. They are the largest predatory fish on the planet, and if you are a seal, great whites are the boogie man.

Despite their size and mythical status in pop culture, I’m less afraid of great whites than I am of tiger sharks. And there’s really only one reason for this: Great whites are almost never interested in eating humans, but tiger sharks eat us with gusto.

Tiger sharks are the second largest predatory shark on the planet, can be found all over the world, and don’t hesitate to make a meal out of just about anyone or anything. They eat sea mammals, fish, sea turtles, license plates (I’m not joking), Ford F150s (kidding), jet engines (am I kidding?), and Russian tourists swimming in Egypt (sadly, not kidding).

Great whites eat people on the big screen, while tiger sharks eat people in real life (No one is hurt in the clip below, but make sure you have some clean underwear on).

Healthy fear

I say all this to say that none of how I feel about these three relatives should result in any of the preemptively murderous/scorched earth attitudes people have towards them or others like them. I don’t wish any of these relatives to go extinct. I admire their abilities and am thankful for the role they play in the ecosystem.

All of them are orders of magnitude older than human beings, have far more knowledge about how to live well on this planet, and as such, deserve my respect as the older siblings they are.

Part of The Wild Kitchen is understanding that we humans may be part of someone else’s kitchen. Humbling, right? But fair is fair. I’ve I’m eaten by a shark, I hope they make good use of my body and live their life to the fullest. I’ll fight like hell to keep my life, but, well, we all have to go some time.

Thinking about my fears of these three relatives — the only one’s I know of that instill a high level of panic-like fear in me — makes me think about how other relatives, especially the ones I’ve killed and eaten, might feel about me.

Thinking and talking about the shared emotions of fear we all feel around how our relatives might see us in the web of relations helps, I think, build the necessary empathy for all relatives that’s missing from USian culture.

It’s okay to be shook by some of our animal siblings. Almost all of them feel the same way about us (the overwhelming number of multi-cellular organisms on this planet are several times smaller than a human child). And that’s all okay so long as we respect each other.

Yes, we routinely kill and eat each other, but we do so because we must in order to live. Always respect, always with gratitude, always with the knowledge that taking a life requires reciprocity to those who remain.

But seriously, if I ever see a giant desert centipede I’m running away screaming. Hell-to-the-naw.

Mobile Fishing Adventure!

I spent Father’s Day this past year down south with my Dad and his brother-in-law fishing Mobile Bay, AL and the Gulf of Mexico. We did some good work including catching two sharks! It was hot as two rats…yeah…it was that hot. We had lots of fun, ate some red snapper, almost got run over by a container ship, and got pulled over by the police! Fun times!

Recommendation

Never buy lighter fluid again

I love charcoal grilling. To me, there’s no other form of grilling outdoors. Gas is useful, for tasks like canning, frying fish, and/or cooking on a wok, but neither of those things are grilling in my book. If it doesn’t have that charcoal taste, then it’s not “grilled”, I don’t care what kind of grill lines that food has!

But I grew up hearing that one of the drawbacks to charcoal cooking was the time it took for the coals to heat up. That time never bothered me, but about 15 years ago I was introduced to a device that changed the way I grilled. This $20 charcoal chimney couldn’t be more simple and eliminated my need for lighter fluid from the first time I used it.

The charcoal chimney works by turbo charging the airflow over your charcoal, which allows the pieces to heat up rapidly. Simply place a healthy wad of paper in the base of the chimney, pour your charcoal on top, light, and in less than 10min you’ll have red hot coals ready for cooking.

Easy work!

And I buy lump charcoal rather than the briquettes. Like a can of Pringles, charcoal briquettes are heavily processed with chemical binders to create their shape. They don’t last as long as whole wood charcoal, and give your food a slightly processed taste.

If you use charcoal and don’t have a charcoal chimney then you’ll thank me and curse everyone else who knew about this and didn’t tell you.

Thanks for reading!

-Jonathan