What's up with snake haters? (rant)

I just got my BP monday. I posted some pics on facebook, and the flood came.. lol After about 10 negative rants I started getting ticked off, and told my wife I'd NEVER put another pic of him or me holding him on FB again. I did get a few good compliments, but by far it was negative to downright hatefull. I'm hooked on my beautiful snake and they'll never get me to change otherwise.

I get it all the time when I mention I have a snake. Then someone ask what kind and the only word they hear is "PYTHON". They think its gonna be like 30feet long and all the badd media hype sterotypes of "PYTHONS". The next thing out of their mouth is aren't you afraid its gonna hurt you kids? I then explain that its a ball python gets no bigger then 5feet and couldn't hurt my dog if it wanted to. Then they really freak out when I they found out I have 10 lol!

hey i hear ya i do. my own dad is a snake hater. the bible has depicted the snake as an evil creature out to get everyone who comes near. in the movies snakes are getting horrible rap and are being depricted as giant, man-eating monsters.
it's sickening at its best.

Yea it does get annoying after a while hearing all the negative comments, I have a little battle going on at my house with my wife, she doesn't like my snakes, and we playfully go back and forward about if my daughter is going to like reptiles, she's 11 months old. I already got my 4 year old godson asking his mom for a gecko, hahahaha. There's always going to be a hater with everything.

My mom is still like that. She thinks my BP is going to break out of it's cage and kill me in my sleep. I have told her at least 50 times that there is no way that can even happen, but she continues to use that same argument as a reason why I shouldn't have one. She even went as far as telling me that I better not have them in the house whenever I have kids.

Though my sister did finally talk her into letting her get a Beardie, so maybe that will desensitize her to reptiles a bit. Though, it's gonna be funny to see her face when I give my sister one of the normals I hatch out when I start breeding. :)

My sister (well, all of them, but the one that lives near me) is a snake hater so rarely comes over. She has three kids (so I don't mind that she rarely comes over LOL) and her 5 year old is a snake lover and just can't enough of them. He has a ton of plastic/rubber/stuffed snakes and a million reptile books and can identify many types and recite basic facts about them. It absolutely cracks me up that she hates them so much but has to sit there with him and read about them and let him handle mine when he does come over (he's due for a hands on visit now that I think about it).

We went to a wildlife fair at my son's alma mater a few months back, she was horrified at the amount of 'loose' snakes and her son was in his glory. Much to her chagrin he handled a lot of them. I can still see her face and it still makes me giggle. I can't wait until he gets older and decides he wants one of his own. That hasn't occurred to him yet, but it will.

My son is working in Tennessee right now, doing reptile surveys for the University of Alabama A & M and updates his FB page with pictures of copperheads, box turtles, skinks, frogs, toads, milk snakes, rat snakes, hoggies...pretty much everything that he traps...and my nephew is constantly asking my sister to go to his page. She sits there and looks at my son tubing copperheads and tells her son it's a great thing but the look on her face tells a different story. It's going to be really funny when her son takes after my son and does that for a living.

Some of my friends have said "well, I'm never coming to your house" and I usually reply with a "I don't recall inviting you". :)

I live in the Pittsburgh area so I went down to the 4th of July celebration at Point State Park a couple of weeks. My wife and I decided to cross the Clemente Bridge to visit some places on the north side. Guess what we saw while walking across the bridge? A guy walking around with his ball python wrapped around his neck! Of course I had to stop and talk to him. Believe it or not, a lot of the people that were on the bridge were stopping to check out his bp and asked him a bunch of questions. Didn't see too many people get grossed out by it or get scared of it. What I saw was more fascination than anything else. So, I guess there is some hope! There's a lot of wildlife around this area so maybe people are just more used to it around here. He had a very healthy looking bp too! Very fat!

Four words for ya...

Get used to it...:mad:

I used to be really annoyed by people who said "Ew I hate snakes." Then I just stopped caring. The way I see it, they are missing out. I get to witness their beauty and experience them every day. I understand how wonderful they are, but those who just don't get it are just missing out. I have been able to convert a few people but at this point its a "If you ask, I'll answer/show." kind of thing when it comes to my reptiles.

Sometimes it's a good thing. Fear of snakes kept my mother in law out of my house for weeks. She finally broke down and started coming over again, but she still stays away from my office/snake room, so I have a fortress of solitude.:gj:

Snakes get a lot of bad press here in South Florida because of the problem with Burms in the everglades, but I love using my beautiful snakes as ambassadors to break down peoples prejudices and educate them. I have had a lot of visitors come over not knowing I had snakes and be terrified at first, only to end up holding them and marveling at how cool they felt and how docile they are.