MARQUETTE TRIBUNE (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) 21 October 08 Does anyone really think snake massages are relaxing? (Lindsay Fiori)
Close your eyes. Take a deep breath and imagine snakes slithering and sliding all over your body. Picture big thick ones coiling around your back and legs. Try to feel little ones moving quickly along your neck and up to your face where a few nibble on your eyelashes.
I don't know about you, but my skin is crawling more than the snakes.
This is no nightmare and it's not a death trap either. It's a new spa treatment. That's right, for $80 you can be subjected to a rare form of torture more commonly seen on "Fear Factor." Sign me up.
At the spa, Ada Barak's Carnivorous Plant Farm, snakes of all sizes are dropped on customers' backs. They crawl over the person and are sometimes wrapped around the customers' toes, legs and arms.
This spa is obviously a great idea since one of the most common phobias is ophidiophobia, or fear of snakes. In fact, a University of Virginia professor and a graduate student released a study in March that found humans are genetically predisposed to fear snakes. That should bring in business.
The snake spa is located in Northern Israel, near the Sea of Galilee, a popular tourist destination and the place where Jesus walked on water. He was probably just trying to avoid the snakes.
Tim McGirk, a TIME magazine correspondent, actually received a snake treatment and wrote an article about the spa. If an editor ever gave me that assignment, I would quit.
I can't be unbiased about this spa. I have been deathly afraid of snakes since elementary school. I distinctly remember watching "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark" and having nightmares for weeks. The scene in which Indi and his love interest get thrown into the tomb of snakes traumatized me. When the snake slithers through her shoe, I still panic, even now. For me, watching the Discovery Channel is always a bad choice, just in case snakes are involved. The reptile house at the zoo is terror inducing.
My neurotic snake phobia aside, the people running this spa and the customers willing to let snakes slither all over them are nuts.
In McGirk's article, he quotes the spa owner and some customers describing the snakes as soothing, calming and curative for muscle aches and migraines. Yes, I can see how it would be quite soothing to have a creature with a mind of its own wrap itself around your neck.
Customers shouldn't worry though because the snakes are non-venomous. Never mind that they can still constrict and bite.
Online, you can watch a video of McGirk and others receiving snake spa treatments. About six snakes are dropped onto the victim's back. The snakes come in all sorts of colors and patterns, meant to ward off potential attackers. There are bright orange and red striped snakes, tiny white ones that crawl in a man's ear and a few with diamond patterns on their backs. The snakes wriggle underneath clothing and into a woman's hair, their tongues flicking all the while. Soothing, right?
So here's to Ada Barak's Carnivorous Plant Farm for finding a way to make people pay for torture. I'd like to thank Barak for coming up with the worst massage and relaxation idea ever. I'll keep my muscle aches and pains. She can keep her snakes.
Does anyone really think snake massages are relaxing?[/