A Great Day to be Alive

Roberto Reyes, a recently-hired undergraduate instructor of Latin American Literature at San Francisco State University, likeable and quickly accepted by his students for his intelligence, his cheerful personality and his ethical correctness, was a content and happy man.

Roberto, smiling, reflected upon his wife, María, and their young daughter, Linda, as he leisurely rode through Golden Gate Park on a beautiful black stallion named Mephistopheles. It was an Indian summer Sunday in early November—a great day to be alive! His surgery had been a complete success, and his cardiologist had given him another lifetime of memories.

As Roberto and Mephistopheles meandered through the park, he reminded himself that today was his fifth wedding anniversary, and how eagerly he anticipated the celebration with family and friends. Little Linda, with her mother’s help, had prepared walnut-filled brownies—Roberto’s favorite dessert. Roberto and his wife shared a lot in common. María was also a Mexican immigrant, and she was a former Spanish and Latin American Literature instructor in the foreign student faculty of the Universidad de Guadalajara. She was a devoted wife and mother as well as a 20-hour-per-week Spanish tutor at San Francisco City College.

“María’s plate is full,” Roberto concluded aloud.

Roberto was rudely awakened from his reverie when Mephistopheles suddenly reared in panic, throwing him onto the soft grass near the entrance to Steinhardt Aquarium. Mephistopheles galloped away at full speed. Roberto, though dazed by the fall, quickly regained his senses and realized that he was confronted, head to head, with a very large rattlesnake. Instinctively, he became as alert as the serpent before him.

Born and raised in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, where venomous snakes abound, Roberto knew that even a slight change in his breathing rhythm would provoke the dangerous reptile. Given Roberto’s recent history and the consequence of a large rattlesnake’s bite, the probability of heart failure overshadowed hope.

Roberto’s thoughts jumped backwards and forwards as fast as the rattlesnake’s “castanets” clicked.

“What would happen to María and Linda with only my meager insurance policy and no pension to see them through?”

Roberto was a relatively inexperienced university instructor, and it would be one year more before he would be awarded his Ph.D. His wife and child would receive minimum monetary and health benefits from the California Department of Education if he were to die.

“Oh my God—I am going die!”

During those few petrifying minutes (that seemed to pass like hours), Roberto resembled a reclining, weather-beaten marble statue, deathly still on the cushy Kentucky bluegrass near the entrance to the Steinhardt Aquarium.

His crisp, white shirt was drenched with cold sweat, as the deadly serpent hissed and dinned. The battle lines had been drawn between the good-natured Roberto Reyes and the menacing western diamondback rattlesnake that was staring him down.

Steinhart Aquarium Administration had notified Emergency Services about the escape of the four-foot long diamondback from an exhibit on the first floor; the Golden Gate Park Animal Control vehicles arrived on the scene almost immediately. An anxious crowd had gathered at a safe distance. Most onlookers crossed their fingers and prayed for the best, clinging desperately to a waning hope, but others impatiently waited for an event to happen. There were no children in danger and, hopefully, there would be no lawsuits—or at least no more than one. The crew prepared their nets and slowly crept up behind the dangerous serpent.

Could Roberto continue to recline, lifeless and frozen, while the park rangers attempted to capture the snake and to rescue the endangered man? The officers were optimistic as they continued their stealthy, forward progress in this surreal standoff between Roberto and the rattler. The ball was now in Roberto’s court.

With net raised, a ranger was about to bag his prize when a baby suddenly cried out. Startled, Roberto glared left, from where the cry had come, then, at lightning speed, the serpent buried its fangs into his neck just below the right ear. The rangers hastily abandoned Roberto’s side and began to disperse the mulling, frightened crowd.

Roberto, now desperately alone, was dripping with sweat and hallucinating...

...suddenly, an excited park ranger, with a cell phone in his hand, shouted loudly, “They say it might be defanged. It IS defanged!”

The yelling startled Roberto to his feet and he took off running towards the fast-moving park ambulance that was coming to his rescue on busy John F. Kennedy Drive.

When the man arrived late Sunday afternoon at the doorstep of 13 Riverton Drive, he greeted María courteously and then looked down at the pretty and happy little girl, briskly tugging at his right pant leg.

“Where’s my Daddy?”

By Thomas Hally

From: Mexico