Turnssss out I can ssssee the future

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/04/2021 (1362 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It took me more than six decades on this planet to discover the startling fact that I am clairvoyant.

For the record, I am not able to look into the future and predict the winners of sporting events, a skill that would allow me to cash in and spend the rest of my life on the couch in our den watching the Weather Network.

Sadly, like most newspaper columnists and political analysts, I am only able to predict completely useless events that no one in their right mind would care about.

I discovered my unique skills in this area late last month after writing a groundbreaking column about how airlines in the U.S. and Canada were cracking down on the range of “emotional-support animals” passengers are allowed to take onboard aircraft.

Basically, dogs are the only animals that are allowed to fly under new rules, but that’s not today’s prophetic point. No, today’s point is that, in that column, I made what I thought was a hilarious joke about a fictitious passenger being ordered off an airplane by a fictitious flight attendant because his “emotional-support python just swallowed the co-pilot.”

At the time, I assumed I was just joking around in a light-hearted manner. Here is the sum of what I was thinking: “Emotional-support python? Ha, ha, ha! Like, who would ever want something as creepy as that, right?”

So you can imagine my surprise when about a week later I stumbled on news reports that proved I was clairvoyant in terms of predicting that emotional-support pythons are, in fact, a thing.

Police in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., were performing a DUI stop last month when they encountered an unexpected passenger in one car.

As you have no doubt already deduced, it was former U.S. president Donald Trump. Ha, ha, ha! Sorry, in reality, the police discovered an extremely large python parked in the passenger seat.

“It’s my emotional-support python,” is what the driver told the officers.

Notes Newsweek: “A news clip covering the story includes photos from the scene: in one image, the enormous yellow-green snake is shown sitting comfortably in the passenger seat while its head reaches towards the glove compartment. Another photo shows an officer on the side of the road, holding the giant python across both of his arms.”

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: “You know, Doug, it doesn’t seem fair to make a big thing about one guy driving around with an emotional-support snake.”

Well, think again, because it turns out this incident was just the tip of a creepy iceberg that, when flipped over, reveals the underside is literally crawling with cold-blooded critters trying to be emotionally supportive by wrapping themselves around your neck.

I say that because I am holding in my hands a news report out of Hamilton, Ohio, about a young man named Michael Secrest who enjoys walking into stores and running errands with his 1.2-metre “emotional-support python” wrapped around his neck.

“A lot of reactions I do get is usually people looking at her,” Secrest said of “Kiki” the snake, which he insists is not a pet, but a mental-health necessity. “I have depression issues, so with her around my neck, she feels like she’s giving me a hug, so that’s what helps me calm through my depression.”

Out of journalistic fairness, I should confess that pythons evoke an emotional response in me, although I would describe that emotion as abject terror; I have a long and inglorious history when it comes to snakes.

For about 15 years, I have dressed up in a red-velvet suit during the Christmas season and had my photo taken with hundreds of jittery animals at Pet Pics with Santa Paws fundraisers in support of the Winnipeg Humane Society.

Every other year, in an effort to give Santa a heart attack, someone will bring their pet snake in for a photo with the Jittery Old Elf. In 2010, a young woman brought her metre-long python, Miss Mae, for a visit. S-S-S-Santa survived, frozen with fear.

The elves, on the other hand, thought it was hilarious and insisted on wrapping the slithering reptile around the top of Santa’s fur-trimmed hat. Other snakes, refusing to have their photos taken, have attempted to hide by slithering inside Santa’s suit while Santa is still in it.

In 2014, in advance of the Manitoba Reptile Breeders’ Expo, I agreed to visit Winnipeg Reptiles, a one-stop reptile supply store, and shot a video in which I delivered a weather forecast with a nearly two-metre-long boa constrictor named “Khaleesi” wrapped around my quaking shoulders.

I do not remember much of what happened that day, other than that Khaleesi insisted on poking her pointy snake face into my sweaty face to convey the concept that I had a pleasing salty aroma.

“You were very brave, Doug. You didn’t run or scream or pee your pants. I’ve had some people freak out when I’ve put a snake on their neck,” the organizer of the reptile show informed me at the time.

What with being clairvoyant, I can see a future in which I get a hug from a scaly support animal — a really, really tight hug!

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca