HAMILTON SPECTATOR (Ontario) 03 October 06 How do you milk a poisonous snake? Carefully (Monte Reel, The Washington Post)
Sao Paulo, Brazil : This building is the seventh circle of hell for anyone whose skin crawls when viewing a tangle of slithering snakes, whose spine stiffens when standing next to a teeming box of white mice, whose imagination turns baroque when contemplating the potential effects of reptile venom on the human form.
But Savio Stefanini isn't fazed.
He's a snake handler at the Butantan Institute, a government-funded research organization that keeps about 72,000 snakes on its sprawling campus here. It's Stefanini's job to get the venom out of the snakes' fangs and into glass beakers. He then passes the venom along to the institute's scientists, who will try to develop medicines and antivenin serums from it.
"The snakes I work with are all poisonous -- there are no other kinds here," he said, standing outside what is known as the extraction room. He seemed to recognize something in his statement that might be mistaken for a cavalier boast, so he quickly amended it. "But I like all kinds of snakes -- not just poisonous ones."
He's not a thrill-seeker, but instead is fuelled by a slower-burning form of motivation: self-discovery. If you confront the world's most elemental symbol of treachery every day, he suggested, certain timeless truisms tend to confront you, striking without warning.
On a recent day, Stefanini grabbed a wooden stick and approached one of the dozens of screen-topped boxes lining the shelves of the room. He used the stick to prop open a screen. Then, with a metal hook, he fished out a 6-foot- long jararaca snake from the box.
Fattened by a steady diet of pink-eared mice, the snake balanced stiffly on the end of the hook, an ungainly creature that perfectly illustrated the maxim: It's not what you're born with, but how you use what you're given.
"Snakes are amazing," said Stefanini, 40. "They don't have legs. They can barely see -- horrible vision problems. But even so, they can still catch prey that is five times larger than they are. It's fascinating to me how they are able to do all that."
On the floor sat a large, gray plastic bucket with a screw top lid. Still holding the snake on the end of his hook, he fed its twisting body into the narrow mouth of the bucket. The snake fell softly to the bottom, where it was shrouded in carbon dioxide, an anesthetic.
The institute has been doing this sort of work for over 100 years. Brazilians often donate snakes they find on their properties to the institute -- even though there is a snake nursery on campus where the scientists raise most of their specimens, including rattlesnakes, coral snakes, surucucus and several types of jararacas. Their venom has helped the researchers develop formulas that are reproduced as synthetics by major pharmaceutical companies and used in a variety of heart medications and pain relievers.
With the hook, Stefanini pulled the snake out of the bucket and placed it on a glass-topped wooden table in the centre of the room. The snake's brown scales had the fleeting sheen of weathered silk. He pressed the back of the snake's head with a pair of forceps, causing its mouth to unhinge. With his other hand, he gripped the snake by the back of the head.
"Sometimes they wake up while we're doing this," he said calmly, "but not often."
Stefanini slowly inserted the forceps in the snake's mouth and pulled up the sheaths of white skin that cover its fangs. Stefanini stared fixedly upon his task, because over time he has learned this truth: The most perilous dangers are the ones you choose not to see.
No one here has ever been bitten while extracting venom. When snakebites do occur, it's usually at feeding time, when a handler is susceptible to distraction and lets his eyes wander.
And has Stefanini ever fallen prey?
A humid afternoon, 2003. The lake at a hydroelectric plant had swollen beyond its shores, forcing animals out from their natural habitat. While walking the perimeters of the lake with a collection bag, Stefanini spotted a harmless lizard sitting beneath a bush. He knelt down close to it and reached out his hand. Bitten. By a jararaca lying nearby.
"It took me six months to be able to close my hand again," said Stefanini, who to this day blames himself for the bite.
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