Reptophilia

National Review, June 30, 1997 by Anthony Daniels

I looked into a cage with a huge, fat lizard called a Nile monitor. It had belonged to a young woman who lived on her own in a single room. She wanted to exercise her monitor (which had grown larger and worse-tempered than she had expected), but found that once it was released, she couldn't get it back into the cage. Proteus came to her rescue.

No disillusioned reptile owner who calls upon Proteus ever blames himself for what has happened. He always blames someone else, usually the pet shop: he wasn't told that pythons grew so large, he wasn't told that reptiles needed a thermostatically controlled vivarium, he wasn't told that they harbored dis- eases or that they bit. One woman whose baby died after becoming infected with salmonella from the feces of the lizard she had let roam in the house blamed the lizard itself -- believing it to be not only physically causative of her baby's death, but morally culpable as well.

Proteus teaches us an important lesson. When Pope (who lived in Twickenham, erstwhile home of Respectable Reptiles) wrote that the proper study of Mankind is Man, he was wrong: the proper study of Mankind is Snake. I have long suspected it.