Why is it so weird?

[Pip]

Why do people act so surprised at the fact that there are people who don't "get it"? Of course mainstream perception is that its weird. A lot of my friends think the snake thing is "weird", but I don't take offense to it, and usually just laugh it off. In fact, I'm usually the first to say "yeah, it's a bit of weird creepy hobby, but I love it!" Usually they love being able to look at them even if they think its weird. Lets not take ourselves so serious, I'm pretty sure they aren't trying to actually offend you

See, I had my first snake when I was 7 or 8 and have had other reptiles my whole life including frogs and geckos... So when i got my bp and some people at work made less than enthusiastic comments, it threw me off guard. Most of my life I've seen reptiles as cool and pretty normal, and so did my friends... But I think that's probably just because my parents allowed us to have such a variety of pets as kids.

So for me, the negativity took a bit of getting used to, but you can usually pretty easily educate people and get them to see the good side of our friends. And yeah, I've always thought it a bit ridiculous how people will say it's weird to have a reptile as a pet, yet they'll keep fish or a dog or cat... I fail to see the difference really

[NomiGold]

Even though I never had reptiles as a kid, my family and close circle of friends all loved or at least appreciated snakes, lizards, ect. We woulds try to catch garter or frogs when we could, and a good many of my friends or even just peers had a cornsnake, or a bearde dragon, or a leopard gecko, so on and so forth. I always considered them a normal-ish pet to keep.

So it was a bit odd for me when I hear people proclaim snakes of any type or even just reptiles in general evil, killers, all that fun stuff. Granted, I mostly hear of it on the internet or American TV. I've yet to have a friend IRL or even on facebook badmouth anyones pet of choice. Maybe I've just been lucky.

I can understand when people get a little dumbfounded when they hear of a person keeping multiple snakes though. A good sized collection may seem a bit crazy to a layperson.

[Pip]

Even though I never had reptiles as a kid, my family and close circle of friends all loved or at least appreciated smakes, lizzards, ect. We woulds try to catch garter or frogs when we could, and a good many of my friends or even just peers had a cornsnake, or a bearde dragon, or a leopard gecko, so on and so forth. I always considered them a normal-ish pet to keep.

So it was a bit odd for me when I hear people proclaim snakes of any type or even just reptiles in general evil, killers, all that fun stuff. Granted, I mostly hear of it on the internet or American TV. I've yet to have a friend IRL or even on facebook badmouth anyones pet of choice. Maybe I've just been lucky.

I can understand when people get a little dumbfounded when they hear of a person keeping multiple snakes though. A good sized collection may seem a bit crazy to a layperson.

Yeah, even if you haven't had one as a kid... Don't all kids go catch frogs and snakes and crawdads?