My sister works with kids and one of her clients wanted her to take her two children to the library for a reptile show they were having there. My sister called me up afterward and told me about the experience. According to my sister, the guy started the show off with a long slide show (which bored the crap out of the kids who were no older than 7 or 8) and when he finally got to the snakes, what he did pissed my sister off. He starts off with a corn snake and starts talking about it.....then he hands it to a child to hold. The kid then proceeds to drop it on the floor. Thankfully the child was seated and the snake didn't have far to fall. He then takes out a pillow case that has a snake already starting to come out of it. It starts striking at him through the bag and he laughs and tells this to the children. He claims it is a snake he hasn't had a lot of time to tame down due to the fact it is a wild caught snake (I don't remember what kind but I think it was some sort of black rat) that he just caught not too long ago. So already this snake is pissed off but he takes it out of the bag anyway (and did I mention this wild caught snake was being kept in a pillow case next to all of the captive snakes. Breaking QT much?) My sister says the snake practically flew out of the bag, mouth open, trying to bite him. The guy just laughs it off and starts talking about the snake. The entire time he has the snake out, it is striking at the kids in the front row, striking at him and eventually latches onto his arm. Oh and he also takes this aggressive snake around the room to show to the kids. At this time, over half the kids run screaming for the adults in the room. They don't settle down until he puts it away.

Well he puts this snake away and then takes out a king snake. He state to the children that this snake will probably try and bite due to the fact that king snakes are cannibals and it can smell the other snakes on him. Sure enough the snake is trying to bite him. After that he takes out a ball python. Now, this ball python is relaxed and not curled up into a ball. The guy begins explaining why they are called a ball python and to show them what a balled up ball python looks like, he FORCES the ball python into a ball, making it curl up by pushing it's head and body around. My sister said he actually pushed the ball pythons head through its curled up body to make it form a complete ball. I was horrified and so was she.

She told me that she actually called up every library in the county (he was to be going to the other libraries either that day or the next) and warned them this guy wasn't professional or responsible and that she did not want him in the library doing more shows.

This kind of thing makes me wish I did educational shows but in the end, other people's kids kind of annoy me and I have stage fright. Not sure if I'd ever do educational shows, but maybe one day.

Have you ever had any bad experiences with educational shows for reptiles? Do you do educational shows and if so, what does your typical show involve?