Helping kids get over their fear of snakes!

[cchardwick]

My niece and nephew in law came over last night and saw my snakes for the first time (they are teenagers). They are both terrified of snakes, in fact they have bad dreams about snakes, I think it was a learned behavior since their parents are terrified of snakes. So I brought them down to my snake room (HE HE HE).

First we watched all the rats, mice, and ASFs running around their aquariums and on their wheels. Then when they were a bit distracted from the rodents I showed them my ARS rack with 17 snakes and just started pulling them out and showing them all the different snakes I had like tiny king snakes, big king snakes, ball pythons big and small and my male Woma python which is my biggest snake. At first they ran out of the room totally afraid of the snakes. After a few snakes while they were peeking in the room from outside of the door they saw there were really neat differences in all my snakes and none of them were mean, they actually started asking to see more of them! They finally realized no one was going to get bit and I actually got both of them to touch the tail end of my Woma while his head was far on the other side of my body.

Towards the end of the experience my nephew in law had this puzzled look on his face and said he wondered why he was so afraid of snakes, like all of the sudden it was a revelation that not all snakes are mean and evil and some can be really cool. My niece in law said that she didn't know that snakes went to the bathroom LOL. It was like she suddenly realized that they were living breathing animals. It was a pretty amazing experience!

[EL-Ziggy]

Nice job CC. Way to spread the knowledge. Each one teach one!

[dkatz4]

This is great! My son was young enough to not have any fear when we got our snake, now we are both trying to convert my wife!

[Bigfish1975]

Great job of helping to tame some irrational fears. It amazes me the level of fear people often have for no explainable reasons. I love when my neighbors kids come down to the house, bringing their friends and want to check out and hold the snakes. I usually take my big pied girl Elvira to shows that I'm vending at. I had a 4 year old and an 83 year old each hold a snake for the first time. Its always fun to help people have a positive encounter with these awesome animals.

[Vipera Berus]

I worked as a Classroom Assistant for a while and took in my corn to show the class after checking with the owner it was ok. Absolutely amazing how 2-5 year olds were all fascinated and not scared, the parents though totally different story. Ended up with quite a few parents giving serious thought as to why they had gotten so scared.

[distaff]

Good job.

Wild snakes still scare me. I was working out in the yard last week, and was startled to find a Desert Kingsnake sunning itself on top of one of my fish tubs. I had gone over there to adjust the shade cloth, and accidentally knocked the snake off with it. We both took off fast in opposite directions. Hope he is Ok.

Really, I OWN one of these, about the same size too. (No, mine isn't lost, I fed him last night.)