My editor asked me what I thought about the sensationalized news reports of a Preston, Idaho junior high school science teacher feeding a puppy to a snake. I think she was suggesting I point my attention to the story regarding an oped viewpoint from me. I said to her, rather glibly, “Bon Appetit!”
The story has gone viral on social media and the local town folk have formed a lynch mob. So much so that the FBI has become involved and local law enforcement have battened down the town with armed guards at Preston Jr. High and protecting the teacher from death threats. There are also an equal number of supporters of the teacher in question and his actions, and they are all threatening one another. This has become an international incident ...of insignificant proportions.
After further review, it turns out it wasn’t a snake but a snapping turtle, and ”the puppy was deformed and going to die anyway.” So, what’s the problem?
Just kidding.
There are also some other unclear issues regarding just who exactly saw this feeding phenomenon ...when, under what circumstances, and who unleashed the social media frenzy, soon to be long forgotten. I think it was a “concerned” parent.
Well, I said to her, this is Preston, Idaho, home of the cult classic ‘Napoleon Dynamite’, and who can forget the famous cow scene when the Preston Jr. High school bus shows up at the wrong time ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Jr2jkbfzk
Ouch! Sometimes s**t happens. This is a rural area. Faux pas of this nature happen all the time.
Just kidding again. Here’s what I really told my editor. I think the guy is nuts, the science teacher, if this incident happened as reported. It's a little too freakish for me. The puppy being sick or deformed is not an excuse, it makes it just that much more freakish. The kids don't need to see this, in this format. A little too "real" for my taste. This teacher should be banished to a carnival freak show for the rest of his life entertaining other freaks like himself that get off on that kind of thing. They're the kind of folks who like to see car wrecks.
I mean, what if someone wanted to feed Stephen Hawking to a space alien. Hawking would go down easy enough, but the wheel chair might get caught up in the alien's throat, or whatever they have. It would make for a nasty scene all around. To us it would be freaky, to the aliens it would be ...nature just running its course.
But seriously, again, those kinds of realities, although "it's a jungle out there", are better left to National Geographic and other such bio documentaries. Someone once sent me a photo of a giant snake who was cut open in Indonesia and there was this Asian guy inside, mid size, all gooey and slicked down ...snake swallowed him whole. He was sleeping in the jungle. The snake wasn’t. Weird, freakish, grizzly, hard to look at, but just the same, mesmerizing ...no "PG 13" rating, however ...definitely "R".
Some people chase trains, some collect coins and stamps, some watch birds, some collect butterflies. Some collect insects. Many of us have puppies and kittens that grow into lifelong friends as our faithful dogs and cats. And then there those who are somehow fascinated by poisonous spiders, snakes, snapping turtles and other reptiles ...exotic animals. They keep them as pets. They often get into a bad situation with them, however, just like this Idaho science teacher. It takes a certain kind of person to lean into these creatures as pets. I once knew a kid in high school who carried around a dead bird in his pocket as a pet. He’s a congressman today. So, go figure.
I remember in my high school days at inner city Bushwick High in Brooklyn, New York, we dissected frogs in Mrs. Shullman’s Biology class. It was disgustingly freaky and fun. Icky. I don’t even know where they got the frogs. Maybe from the local fish market, Freschetta’s Fresh Fish. Maybe Mr. Freschetta imported the frogs from upstate or Long Island ..they probably had frogs on Long Island, turtles too. He must have had a sweet deal with the Bushwick High School biology department.
But what was really freakish and icky was when, right in the middle of the frog dissecting exercise, Mrs. Shullman came into the room all pale in the face and looking tired and scared, she dismissed class. She told us JFK had just been shot and killed.
Nothing was the same after that. It changed everything. I forgot all about turtles and frogs, and the kid with the dead bird in his pocket. I’d never had a disconcerting mass media moment like that. Then there was 9/11.
My advice to the “concerned parents” out there would be to keep things in perspective, keep a cool head, don’t overreact, and stay away from social media.
John Kushma is a communication consultant and lives in Logan, Utah.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-george-kushma-379a5762
http://newsbout.com/a/John+Kushma
