Child-shoots-snake story backfires

Why there's no charm in the story of a snake-shooting 7-year-old

I can’t think of a recent newspaper story that’s heated up my blood more than “Girl, age 7, turns egg-stealing snake into a dead duck.”

The story of a Nottoway County child who caught a black snake eating eggs she ordinarily sells ran in The Roanoke Times on July 9.

Let me make very clear that my purpose is not to criticize this child. As an animal lover, of course I regret that she shot the snake. As a rational adult, I realize that the nonvenemous snake was not likely to harm anyone. And, as the keeper of a henhouse, I know that it is in the nature of snakes to eat eggs occasionally. (In the very same week this story ran, I had a large black snake in one of my hen nests, eating eggs. I ignored him. He went away.)

But children know only what adults teach them. The child in this case is 7 years old, and she has apparently been taught by her father to love shooting and hunting above all else. The girl’s father says she shot a deer last year, at age 6. And when the Associated Press writer, Bill Baskervill, asked what else she likes to do, the child replied “nothing.”

So naturally, when an animal she’s been taught to view as a pest slithered into range, she was eager to shoot it.

I am also not going to criticize the child’s father, as I believe that people have a right to allow – even encourage – their children to do things that are offensive to me, so long as the actions are within the bounds of the law. (The larger problem, as I see it, is that the law allows someone to put a gun into the hands of a 7-year-old.)

The main question I’ve been contemplating all week is this:

Why would the media glorify a child who shot an animal because she was mad at it?

I’m not surprised that newspapers are eager to publish this sort of story. It falls into the same category – novelty news – as the story of the bear that entered Franklin County hospital a few weeks ago. It’s the kind of story people love to tell each other at parties and in waiting rooms. Several people have told it to me.

And this kind of story is easy for newspapers to run, as it usually comes from a wire service (in this case, the AP) and can be reprinted verbatim. (You can’t do this in English class, but it’s perfectly legitimate in journalism. After all, papers pay for such wire services.)

In a quick online search, I found the story reprinted in more than 40 newspapers, many in Virginia, most in the South. Most used the same lead as the story that ran in The Roanoke Times, so I’m guessing these papers simply ran the AP story.

What’s even more troubling to me than the story’s circulation is the tone most papers gave it. The Roanoke Times used a comic headline: “Girl, age 7, turns egg-stealing snake into a dead duck.”

Some newspapers chose melodrama over comedy. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s headline read “7-year-old Virginia girl guns down a big snake.”

I’m relatively sure that in the unlikely event I shot a snake stealing my eggs no paper (never mind 40 of them) would run a story with a picture of me holding up the snake. The remoteness of that possibility makes clear that this story circulated for only one reason: the child’s age.

And that is the heart of the problem, as I see it.

If I were the 7-year-old snake-shooter, here’s the lesson I would draw from this incident:

If a snake gets in my hen house, and I’m mad at it for eating my eggs, I’ll shoot it. This not only makes me feel better and keeps the snake from eating any more of my eggs, but it also comes with a big bonus. Somebody might tell a reporter, and I might get my picture in the paper. Then other papers – even some in far-off big cities – might pick up the story, and I’ll have a big scrapbook of clippings, starring me.

So I’m not nearly as concerned about what this sharp-shooting 7-year-old has been taught by her father as I am about what the media taught her last week.