goddaughter is very iffy about them. Her mom hates them, her brother's scared of them, Dad only worries about venomous ones and I'm on his side. Not long ago he found a snake about, oh, 15" long in the garage. Between trying to decide if it was a 'get rid of it' or 'take it away from the house somewhere'(Mom wasn't home) it got a bit exciting, and g-daughter was very excited. Finally got a good-enough look to be certain it wasn't venomous, which changed the mission to 'take it away'; he finally got it pinned and I grabbed it. With g-daughter asking loudly and anxiously did I know what I was doing?(no, I didn't actually answer that)
Once got it a ways from the house and released in the grass, got back to find that g-daughter was now giving Dad hell for possibly hurting the snake she's still halfway scared of. We explained that a snake like that can't hurt you, and they eat bugs.
Pause for thought.
"What kind of bugs?"
"Crickets and grasshoppers mostly, right now."
Longer pause.
"I don't like grasshoppers..."
She's much more sympathetic to Johnny No-Legs now.
By the way, if you're not familiar with where I got that name: where else?
3 comments:
Hard to find people that are moderate about snakes. People seem to either love them or are terrified of them. I love them, myself, have since I was a young boy growing up in Florida. Have had pet snakes off and on ever since. None currently, though. I tend to view the venomous ones as a source of exotic leather, at least if they are roadkilled; I don't willingly kill even a venomous snake. Have a nice Copperhead hat band. Would love a belt made of Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake, but frankly it would have to be at least a five-footer to make it around my waistline.
I like both snakes and spiders, but then there aren't any really dangerous ones, of either group, in my country. One viper, with poison weak enough that its bite generally can't kill, or not necessarily even cause any great inconvenience to an adult, and possibly a couple of species of spiders with strong enough poison to cause problems, except there seems to be some debate going on about that and the possible cases of bite victims (well, known ones) can be counted with the fingers of one hand.
Spiders I have been handling my whole life, I tend to be the go to individual when one needs to be removed from the premises, but snakes I just observe. But I don't think I'd go near either if I lived somewhere you have really poisonous ones.
We've got four types of venomous snakes here that can seriously mess you up, and several spiders that range from 'Ow!' to "Uh, dude, we better get you to the ER."
Nothing like Australia, fortunately
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