Scott the debate about a fuzzy against a snake is one that I make a lot.

Snakes are the perfect modern pet. They don't need constant care the way a cat or dog do food every day litter every day attention and care everyday. Most people I know whom have a fuzzy pet always felt guilty as they do not have enough time to spend with it. They get home late and rush about to walk the dog feel badly that they were late or worse race home let the dog out then dash off somewhere. A snake doesn't mind if you don't spend time with it you are not depriving it of a pack structure. It doesn't need fresh food everyday or water changed everyday for that matter fresh every few days is fine.

Cats and dogs don't love the owner, they are pack animals and have a social structure and people just fit into that structure. Snakes might not relate to people as part of a social structure but they do make an equivalent shift. A new snake unused to people will see a human as a predator and something to be feared. They show typical reptilian fear responses at first. However at some point in many cases there is a change that you become something to to fear and something else, not food or a sex trigger just an animate landscape. In their own way that is as much perhaps more of a commitment than a social animal acceptance into a social structure is. One of my snakes completely ignores my actions in the enclosure and is more interested in what is on my desk than what I am doing. That last little bit of tail that anchors him from falling and contact with something that is familiar and 'safe' is a deep commitment to me, not a dog or cat but something very deep. It is you are not prey nor predator but a warm moving tree. He is like this with me and to a lesser extent my partner but no one else he treats everybody else as something that might want to eat him. It is so completely un natural for a snake that when it does happen it is quite a magical experience.