I’ve always wanted to know how snakes do it.
Make love, you know.
I mean, they seem all of a piece.
It’s hard to imagine a
protrusion or a hole.
I asked a vet from the zoo. He didn’t seem
to know,
just said, “they do it, don’t worry,”
in a smart-ass,
knowing way, as if to show
he was superior to my question.
I
asked another vet, this one does research
on animal reproduction
at a major New York hospital,
and he didn’t seem to know either,
just muttered something about a cloaca.
I looked that up in the
dictionary:
“The common chamber into which the intestinal,
urinary, and generative canals discharge.”
Also a word for sewer.
He seemed to think that would satisfy me.
It didn’t, of course. I
was longing
to imagine the scene. Two snakes, you know.
Then
while I was reading Cosmo at the gynecologist’s
I came upon a
fascinating article on love
in the animal world. Not only, it
said,
not only does the male snake have a penis,
he has two
penises. It seems one’s a spare,
in case he loses one, or goes
over a pothole, or something.
No wonder those guys didn’t want to
talk about it.