I don't know where to even begin with this thread.
I think for the most part we all here feel that we are surrounded by ignorance beyond belief at one point or another by the actions and words that come out of others mouths concerning our interest. The wife and I have two different approaches towards people when it comes to attitudes towards snakes.
When we run across negative contact with people when we physically have one of 'the boys' in our posession outside the wife's response is to go on the attack - she takes offense to it and takes it personally that a person feels it necessary to voice their disapproval. She'll always snap back with something sarcastic like "It's a friggin' rattlesnake!" or "Oh yeah, well I hate dogs!" (if the person happens to have a dog with them). With me, I find it as a target of opportunity to educate and inform.
Grant you, our love for these creatures is hardly the rule out there amongst the general populous and I understand your frustration but try to channel that anger into a positive experience. I have run across people I'd love to just throw a big fat P/K rat in their face and smear the scent all over it then heave our Colombian boa Mr. Biggs right at their friggin' nose and have him lock onto their idiotic, stupid head with over 200 backward curving teeth all the while throwing his huge coils around their neck while the person dropped to the ground futilely trying to unwrap him from their ever reddening face while he choked off the air supply to that obviously empty skull which is supposed to contain a brain...but I digress.
I mentioned in another thread that we do a 'Critter Show' at one of the preschools here and we get the "...my Dad whacked at it with a shovel while we threw rocks at it" ALL the time. There has not been one time when we didn't hear something along those lines. And the adults are no better. It just gets passed from generation to generation. I'm not saying that that's okay, that's just the way it is but if we can get the word out there how these magnificent really are and dispell the rumors and myths we might be able to change just one mind at a time.
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