Dinosaurs, Sharks, and Snakes, Oh My!

One of our greatest inventions yet, hands down, has got to be the internet. It’s the ultimate gossip column, editorial page, encyclopedia, and porn emporium all rolled into one. It’s amazing the kinds of things you can find and learn on the internet. Some things you never knew had a name, and some things you never knew were a thing.

For example, do you know what the word vore means? I sure as hell didn’t know what it was, what it meant, or for that matter that it was a thing until I read it somewhere on social media.

To save you the trouble of looking it up, I’ll explain.

Vore apparently is short of vorarephilia, defined as either the erotic desire to be consumed or to consume another person or creature or the erotic attraction to the process of eating in general.

Consider that thought for a moment. The fact that that word exists implies that enough people exist who actually experience this feeling to the point that some cunning linguist felt there needed to be a word to describe it. (Maybe that same cunning linguistic felt it themselves and invented the word so as not to feel like a weirdo. Perhaps they even bribed the people at the Oxford English Dictionary to slip it in one year too.)

While you’re at it, ponder this. How do you think one of these vorarephiles—if that’s the right word—would react if they suddenly found themselves stranded on an island of cannibals? That’s got to be their Disneyland fantasy, right? They don’t want to meet Mickey. They want to meet Ubu, the chief of the tribe who intends to have them as a guest for dinner…by roasting them on a spit.

Anyway, I bring this up simply because—I don’t understand it. I don’t get this fetish. (Then again, I don’t get a lot of fetishes.)  The reason I find this one particularly odd is simple: the idea of being the main course of some flesh eating monster’s evening meal has…never appealed to me.

Let me clarify.

As a kid, three movies thoroughly traumatized me: JAWS, JURAASIC PARK, and ANACONDA. Now what do these three movies have in common?

Any guesses?

Well, the topic from the beginning of this piece should be a dead giveaway. All three movies feature extensive, on-camera scenes of PEOPLE BEING EATEN.

My memories of my first viewings of these movies all involve a dark night in the family living room, where we all gathered to enjoy some good ole-fashioned family entertainment.

(For those of you listening with no sense of irony, that’s what you call sarcasm.)

Then, when the first death-by-carnivore incident occurs (and in all three of those movies, that happens right at the start), I recall shutting my eyes, covering my ears, and at some point, burying my face in my mother’s side. I was genuinely scared shitless. And from that point on, and to this very day, I’m terrified of being some creature’s next meal.

Granted, as time’s passed, this fear has somewhat abated. It began to do so even while I was still a kid.

I lived (and live), in a landlocked part of the country in St. Louis, Missouri, so the likelihood of being on the receiving end of a Great White Shark’s jaws was (and remains) low. Though, I do admit that every time I visit the beach, I don’t go out very fair into the water.

At age 6 or 7, I also knew the likelihood of being some Velociraptor or Tyrannosaurs Rex’s food was also so low, it might as well reside in the earth’s core. Science is great at many things, but cloning dinosaurs ain’t one of them (yet). Although, one downside to that was that one of my favorite places in the city became a terror for me.

In St. Louis, across the highway from our biggest park (aptly named…Forest Park…we’re about as creative as New York with Central Park), sits the St. Louis Science Center. Having been a childhood nerd, it was a playground for me. There was just one problem. Dead in the center of the building stood two life-sized Dinosaurs.

One of them was a T-Rex.

I was so scared of that thing after having seen Jurassic Park for the first time, it’s a marvel I never wet my pants when I went near it. This thing wasn’t only just big. Oh, no. It was also animatronic. It moved. It blinked. And, worst of all, it roared. My little wussy kid mind seriously thought, for a while anyway, that one day, it was going to step from its platform (where it stood, fixed), and start chasing after me. After a while though, I came to realize it wouldn’t, but the memory remains vivid.

As for Anaconda’s impact on my childhood, it instigated my life-long loathing of all things serpentine.

In addition to being the first real bad movie I ever saw (I’m certain both Jenifer Lopez and Ice Cube aren’t proud of having it on their resumes, since it’s JAWS with a snake), it’s the one that had the worst far-reaching impact on me. Dinosaurs were dead, and I didn’t live near the ocean, so sharks weren’t a BFD. But snakes…are alive. And they’re everywhere.

They’re especially in my other favorite place in St. Louis: the St. Louis Zoo’s Herpetarium, locally known as the Reptile House (which is rude because it leaves out all the amphibians).

I loved the reptile house for one reason: the turtles and tortoises. Sadly in order to get to see them, I also had to go near tank after tank of snakes…including one that had an actual anaconda in it. For years, I never actually looked at the snake. I just darted past the tank as quickly as I could, hoping that the snake wouldn’t suddenly spring to life as it saw me and decided to come busting through the glass of its tank and trying and eat me.

This went on until I was 14.

Finally though, after educating myself on snakes, I came to a form of peace with them. I figured as long as I kept out of their way and left them alone, they’d leave me alone (unless it’s a black mamba, those venomous bastards can eat shit and die).

You can laugh at this fear of mine, if you want, but that fear has probably kept me alive for years because it’s kept me from doing stupid things.

For example, I’ve never gone camping, alone, in an uncharted stretch of land. I’ve never gone camping, alone, in a charted stretch of land for that matter. I’ve also never gone shark diving. The sight of Richard Dreyfuss fending of a giant shark in a shark cage taught me one thing: don’t trust the cage. Finally, it’s also taught me that, if an Elon Musk-style billionaire ever invites me to visit a theme park full of formerly extinct carnivores, the best reaction to that invite is to just say no.

If that makes me a wet-blanket, so be it. At least I’ll be a living wet-blanket, instead of a dead, digested piece of dinosaur poop.