My mother's ignorance bothers me

[Navy]

If you want to skip my story, the topic is about how to deal with people who try to bring you down for liking herps and try to take away our rights to own them.


For the first 6 years of my life, I lived with my aunt, uncle, and cousins because my parents were not suitable.. parents.
My cousins owned 4 ball pythons, an iguana, and a Burmese python, for those first 6 years I caught and played with bugs and lizards I found outside.
When my parents got custody of me, and we moved to Florida, I continued searching for lizards and bugs to catch and play with, but when my mother found out she would not have it. She told me they were dirty and diseased creatures who I should far away from I would be put on restriction if she saw me playing with the critters I found in my yard.

In 3rd grade I met some really cool classmates who I would go to the lake to play with, we would look for little garden snakes and grasshoppers. And we did it in secret because none of our parents liked our little hobby.
And every day I would come home all dirty and sweaty with the same old story "Went to the lake to play tag and hang out"
One day, my mother decided to come get me because we needed to go somewhere and caught us playing with this tortoise we found. After that, I wasn't allowed to play with them anymore.

When I was 12 after begging my mother for months and months to let me get a manageable snake she agreed to it, but she said it was to always stay in my room and if she saw it outside of there, she'd release it.

Now the tabled have turned, sometimes she stays with me in my apartment that I pay for. So whether she likes it or not, she'll either have to deal with my snakes or leave. But that doesn't stop her from nagging me and my friends to death any time we bring up anything that's not cute and fuzzy.
She is constantly bringing my hobby down, and telling me and my friends that we're crazy.

And it's always the same old thing "I don't see why anyone would own a snake"
Recently a friend and I were in the living room discussing the potential python ban, and she walked in the kitchen and overheard us and decided to jump in by claiming that large snakes were a menace and danger to society and they shouldn't be allowed in the US. My friend got so mad he stormed out of my house and refuses to come back when she's here.


How do you deal with these type of people? It's like arguing with a rock, they think it's okay to control other people's lives just because it's not something they're interested in.