Quote of the Day (The Venerable Bede, on Why Snakes Don’t Exist in Ireland)

“Ireland is far more favoured than Britain by latitude, and by its mild and healthy climate ... There are no reptiles, and no snake can exist there; for although often brought over from Britain, as soon as the ship nears land, they breathe the scent air and die.”— Anglo-Saxon scholar and monk The Venerable Bede (672-735 AD), Ecclesiastical History of the English People

Too bad the colonialism that Britain brought over centuries later didn’t “breathe the scent air and die.”