Anti Gravity: Strife after Death; September 1999; Scientific American Magazine; by Mirsky; 1 Page(s)

Freud said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.By the same logic,sometimes a snake is just a snake. Which is good, because I've been thinking a lot about snakes lately. Unprovoked, such contemplation might make me consider analysis of a Freudian nature, but these thoughts have clear inspiration-namely, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and the U.S. House of Representatives.

NEJM recently carried a letter with the striking title,"Envenomations by Rattlesnakes Thought to Be Dead." The authors, Jeffrey R.Suchard and Frank LoVecchio of the Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Phoenix, described five cases of men-only men do dumb stuff like this, apparently-who got the surprise of their life from snakes that had just shuffled off their own mortal coils. Make no mistake,these snakes were as dead as Julius Caesar. "They retain some primitive reflex actions for a short while after being killed," Suchard explains.