Word: snake
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...going to be internationally famous, this is the way to do it. Jean Auel's books have sold 34 million copies, but she can still walk into Starbucks without turning heads, and unlike a certain teen star with similar pull, she won't be caught prancing around with a snake on her shoulders. Skinning it with a flint knife would be more her style: Auel is the author of the Neolithic saga The Clan of the Cave Bear and its four sequels...
...place? So we can watch animals acting nothing like themselves in a plastic environment? So we can point at orangutans and pretend we're learning something about them when in fact we're simply capitalizing on their misery? So zoo gift shops can sell lots of "I Survived the Snake House" t-shirts? Proponents of zoos say that the public needs to see animals up close so we will be moved to fund habitats around the world. But try telling that to the unlucky beasts who get to waste away in thralldom so other animals half a world away...
...town's old quarter, which on the map looks like a boot giving the fat brown snake of the Mekong a kick in the belly, is a conservationist's paradise: a kind of colonial Disneyland with lane after unspoiled, palm-fringed lane filled with French brick and stucco buildings and teakwood homes that sag with age. On almost every corner and rise sits a temple: there are more than 30, some half a millennium old. The golden sweep of their winglike roofs seems to suspend them in the hazy skies. The place is so photogenic the local Kodak concession must...
...rent: a tropical island in the Andaman Sea, covered in primary rain forest and fringed by coral reefs. Current occupants: hermit crabs, several varieties of snake, geckos, bats, rats, shrews, birds and the occasional sea turtle visiting the beach to lay her eggs. Going cheap at $100 a year...
...head of the queue, sitting in the lotus position, is Luang Phi Pao, a young monk whose arms and legs are covered with tattooed mantras and serpents. He dips a pointed, 60-cm silver rod into blue black ink infused with Chinese herbs and snake venom. With a steady rhythm, he delicately jabs Niwet Paopunsri, an auto mechanic, inscribing the words The Heart of Lord Buddha in ancient Khmer on the small of his back. (That's Pao's specialty; other monks draw animals or religious symbols.) Finished with the inscription, Pao whispers a prayer...