Actually, that's not the usual response I get from people around here at all. I do a lot of educational hands on shows with various other people from my herp society and have shown off my animals to literally thousands of people. Also nearly every person I know from friends to coworkers knows that I keep reptiles, especially snakes, in my home. Yet negative comments are actually pretty rare. Maybe it is a regional thing, this far up north we don't have any venomous species so the average kid growing up around here never heard their mom tell them to 'look out for snakes' every time they went outside to play so they didn't grow up with that fear. I don't know, maybe something to think about.