Racing Snakes
On Racing Snakes
In the hermetic society of snake-racing Victorian poets and their training practices, the poets arrive at the forest very early in the morning to scramble around on their hands and knees in search of grubs, beetles, and small rodents to feed their expensively trained and beautifully coiffed racing snakes.
Yes, coiffed. Racing snakes.
Snakes still had hair in those days. It was the current fashion to let your best competition snake's hair grow long, train it with hair, then right before the race, shave off the hair and the snake just takes off like a shot at the starting gun. The hair grows back in a matter of days, or at least it did until depilatories became popular and enthusiasts started soaking their snakes in it overnight to remove the hair and reduce the friction. These people were advocates of the theory that snakes, particularly racing snakes, don't need hair at all. The snakes, of course, were not consulted. They were unceremoniously dunked in Nair and wiped clean after five minutes. Some of the snakes were rudely shaven. Others figured out what was going to happen to them, shivered at the prospect, slithered under the furniture, and were lost.