Word: snake
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...spooky," she wrote one night. "I sleep at the top of the house (like Ron) and when it's stormy like tonight I keep waking up wondering what creaked ... you see, I'm not as brave as Harry--if you told me there was a gigantic snake wandering around at night where I was living, I'd hide under the bedclothes and let someone else sort it out." Jo was candid about other things that frightened her. "I don't mind talking to big groups of people your age at all, because you ask interesting questions, but talking to adults...
...leaving the lights on, the door open and the air conditioning running and taking a month's worth of food, including raisins, green beans, tuna and trail mix. More than 200 federal agents fanned out across a 500,000-acre swath of North Carolina's craggy peaks, caves and snake-infested underbrush. Helicopters with infrared scopes scoured the land; listening posts and cameras were set up. Yet by mid-2000 the feds had largely dispersed...
...Fear of snakes, for instance, is the most common human phobia, and it makes good evolutionary sense for it to be instinctive. Learning to fear snakes the hard way would be dangerous. Yet experiments with monkeys reveal that their fear of snakes (and probably ours) must still be acquired by watching another individual react with fear to a snake. It turns out that it is easy to teach monkeys to fear snakes but very difficult to teach them to fear flowers. What we inherit is not a fear of snakes but a predisposition to learn a fear of snakes...
...Snake is especially coveted, in part for its purported health benefits. In May, the director of the Center for Disease Control in the eastern province of Jiangsu was quoted in the local paper as advising citizens to eat plenty of snake to boost their immune systems against SARS. Despite the wildlife ban, mesh bags crawling with snakes are heaped on plywood counters in Shanghai's outlying Fengxian district, alongside hopping nets of wild frogs...
...tout its restorative powers. The same disregard goes for many of China's native endangered species. "If I could find a good way to cook tiger, I'd prepare it," says a chef surnamed Chen at Shanghai's Guhua Garden restaurant as he hacks up a freshly skinned king snake...