UPDATE: An alert reader noted that Olivia Binfield has her own website on which her poem (yes, she wrote it) is printed. Be sure to read her other poems, including the classic “Respect for Rhino.”
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From “Britain’s Got Talent”, this is a totally adorable video of 7-year-old Olivia, who wants to be a zoologist, reciting a poem about biological conservation. If it doesn’t make you smile, you need to frequent some other website!
I hope she does become a zoologist.
h/t: P.
Eep!
Cute, and I love snakes…but that was about on a par with her sticking her head in a lion’s mouth. Not an example of responsible parenting!
I have no problem with her parents keeping a snake like that with her in the house and encouraging her to handle the snake. But, until she’s strong enough to extract herself on her own, the snake should never be permitted to form a loop around her.
Same thing as with big dogs. A doberman can be a wonderful addition to a young family, but no doberman, no matter how loving and gentle, should ever be permitted un-supervised play time with a child her age.
b&
That snake was fairly large. I think even an adult could get in serious trouble with it.
Exactly — that’s why I went with the lion analogy.
When Roy Horn was mauled, Montecore, the tiger, was attempting to protect Roy by dragging him from danger to safety. The cat was trying to do the right thing, and it was an honest mistake on the cat’s part that led to the injury…an injury that properly should have been prevented by protecting the cat from the audience.
b&
Loved Olivia, and her recital. Brought a smile to my face, and a tear to my eye.
I don’t want to seem curmudgeonly, but it seems a bit irresponsible to me for Olivia’s parents to allow her to carry a constrictor around like that. Incidents with these snakes do occur on a fairly regular basis. Particularly in an environment that the snake is not used to with all kinds of novel stimuli that may increase the chances of it reacting in an unfortunate way.
As a therapeutic measure against the herpetophobia I was afflicted with as a child, it was recommended that I take care of my school’s pet Python reticulatus. So I did, for several months. The python was relatively young, and perhaps 140-150 cm in length. Still, it was capable of effecting very convincing constrictions. It could also produce quite nasty bites. But its most memorable reaction to stress when handled, especially when idiots would tie it noose-like around their necks, was to micturate and, if previously fed, to defecate upon the trespassers.
I wish the snake had done so with Olivia, to teach her and her parents a harmless but malodorous lesson about the needless and reckless handling of a predator under circumstances to which evolution has in no way prepared it. If she grows up to be a zoologist, I hope she looks back to this as the most embarrassing moment of her life — and a very lucky break.
That rhyme is funny! Never heard it before.
I think it’s from Ruthless Rhymes For Heartless Homes, by Harry Graham.
My mother used to quote:
Little Willie in his purple sashes
Fell into the fire and was burnt to ashes
Now all at once the room grew chilly
For no one had the heart to poke poor Willie.
Thanks!
What a sweetie.
While she doesn’t seem to have been concerned about dear Lucy wrapping herself tighter and tighter around her neck, I think every adult there was not sure whether to panic or applaud.
HERE’S the adorable Olivia Binfield’s website where she has other poems. She’s reached the grand old age of 9 years with no snake snack attack problems up to now.
At her site she reports:-
Regarding the risk to Olivia’s life. I speculate that…
** the reason she went back off stage to collect the snake was to reduce the time it was draped around her
** the interior of the snake box would have been dark & possibly cooled with ice or gel packs
C’mon! I’m SURE they would have uncoiled the snake had it really started to strangle her. I mean, it’s not America where they might have waited to up the ratings!
I agree that it was appropriately supervised, and she has performed a great service to zoology critters everywhere. It was unforgettable!
You and me both. Is there a biologist alive who did not, as a child, dream of being a biologist? I’ve no doubt there are, but it’s definitely a pattern. I remember seeing Jack Horner on television relating how privileged he felt that, among all of the children who wished for nothing more, he was the one who got to study Tyrannosaurus rex for a living.
That was too cute!
I wonder if conservation efforts would have better success in terms of public perception and awareness if more little kids delivered heart wrenching messages like that as ambassadors? Though I’m sure some would consider it left-wing manipulation/propaganda.
As far as the snake – it does indeed seem a bit large for her, and I was relieved when she finally went off stage. Though in my experience, smaller snakes tend to grab on and squeeze tighter than large ones (tame pet snakes, at least). My corn snake has nearly choked me by accident. My ball python is three or four times the thickness, but a total softie and far too lazy to hold on that tight. That boa seemed pretty relaxed. But no matter what it must have been heavy!
I hope she has much success in her future and sticks with her passion. When I was 7 I knew I wanted to be an entomologist, and now I’m in the midst of a PhD on caterpillar evolution/behavior. With this early start and media exposure I bet she’ll do great things.
I hope she doesn’t, but only because my young cousin has her BS in zoology and has spent 3 years desperate for grad school. I haven’t looked too much, but she says she’s told it’s a dead field.
I hope Olivia follows her dream and gets an awesome undergrad adviser that steers her toward a viable career.
That’s so sad.
Jerry and I, as well as most of the people I’ve ever thought of as friends (not to mention actual FB friends), have totally wasted our lives in a non-viable career.
Why didn’t anyone tell us sooner? One negative anecdote at the right moment might have saved us from understanding the nature and history of life for a living. We might have become lawyers or televangelists or something useful like that, if only we’d known…
Wasted lives?
A field’s viability can change dramatically in 40 years. Are there reasons why the commenter’s fear is overblown?
I was taking the piss, don’cha know.
Actually, I find the presumption that a bright and enthusiastic young person should be discouraged from pursuing her current career goals (most particularly, in zoology) to be bloody offensive, as well as completely absurd.
The comments regarding the danger the snake posed all well taken, but I also wonder whether parental curtailment of my gun powder/flash powder/rocketry pyrotechnic experiments might have discouraged me from becoming a chemist!
The comments about the snake are overwrought. That snake has no doubt been handled by humans since birth, and there can be even less doubt that it was well fed. Beyond that, the girl has clearly held the snake often before (you don’t learn how to balance that much relative weight coiled on your shoulders in one go).
Every day brings some danger of demise to all of us, and everything in life worth doing entails some kind of risk. Olivia was more likely to be killed in an automobile accident on the way to the show than by that snake.
Overwrought? I disagree. I am a bit of an adrenalin junky and have no issues with taking reasonable risks. I’m not saying it should be against the law or anything. But I am criticizing the parents, for valid reasons. It does not matter if the snake is handled by humans since birth. It doesn’t matter that the little girl has held the snake before. And death is not the only concern, just the ultimate one. I am not concerned that the girl could have been killed in this instance. Plenty of help close by. But she could have been seriously injured. Incidents occur more frequently than you suggest, particularly when you figure them against people who handle such snakes instead of the entire population, most of which do not handle such snakes.
Here are just a few that popped up in my first search attempt.
January 17, 1992/Clayton, North Carolina: A woman called 911 after her 12-foot pet
python bit her hand. By the time rescuers arrived, the snake had swallowed her hand
up to the wrist.
June 21, 1991/Long Beach, California: Neighbors called for help after hearing the
screams of a 9-year-old boy being attacked by his 12-foot pet Burmese python.
Rescuers found the child with the snake swallowing his foot and coiled around his leg up to the knee.
July 20, 1993/Commerce City, Colorado: A 15-year-old was killed by his brother’s
11½-foot pet Burmese python. He had snake bites on his body, and an autopsy found
he was suffocated. The 8-year-old snake had been a family pet since she was only a
foot long.
August 11, 1997/Anaheim, California: A 10-year-old boy was attacked by his pet 12-
foot, 65-pound African rock python. The python, who was described “as thick as a
man’s thigh,” latched onto the boy’s hand and coiled tightly around his arm as he
was giving him a bowl of water. The boy’s older brother stabbed the snake several
times while waiting for paramedics to arrive. Worried that the snake would break his arm, paramedics decapitated the snake with a kitchen knife. The boy was treated at a medical center. One paramedic commented this was the third child he has rescued
“from the suffocating embrace of pythons.”
April 3, 2007/Miami, Florida: A 3-year-old boy was bitten in the face by a 6-foot boa
constrictor when posing with the snake for a photograph at a theme park, and was
taken to a hospital for treatment.
July 31, 2008/Melbourne, Florida: A Brevard Zoo camp counselor was treated at a
hospital after being bitten on the neck by a 5-foot, 14-pound boa constrictor while
exhibiting the snake to a group of children.
January 21, 2009/Las Vegas, Nevada: A 3-year-old boy was bitten and squeezed to
the point of unconsciousness by an 18-foot reticulated python that the family was
taking care of for a friend. It took six police officers, an animal control officer and the mother, who stabbed the snake with a kitchen knife, to free the child. The child had “light brown stuff” coming from his mouth and his face turned blue. As the mother began CPR, the injured snake then wrapped around her waist. The toddler was
hospitalized over night. The snake had been in the home for four to six weeks and
had somehow gotten loose. The snake was euthanized. The parents were charged
with felony child abuse and ultimately entered a plea deal for a misdemeanor
charge.
June 9, 2010/Papillion, Nebraska: A 34-year-old man was strangled to death by his 9-
foot, 25-pound pet red-tailed boa constrictor while showing the animal to a friend. The man had often taken the snake outdoors and let children play with the animal.
June 5, 2012/Colorado Springs, Colorado: A snake exhibitor went to the emergency
room after he was bitten in the face by his 18-foot tiger reticulated python—just days
after the snake had been used for a presentation at an elementary school. The bite measured nine inches from the top of the man’s nose to the bottom of his throat,
caused profuse bleeding, and missed his eye by one-half inch.
These are just a small sampling, and mostly of more minor incidents. There are tons more. Snakes are wild animals that are not susceptible to being tamed and they are very successful predators. You have to always be on guard with them, just as with any other wild animal.
Congratulations on completely missing the point. Shall I now list the accidents that happen during every other activity engaged in by the girl that day?
I didn’t miss your cliche, obvious point. But by all means, don’t let reality get in the way of your little indignation rush.
Reblogged this on Mark Solock Blog.