Aww that sucks. My mom hated snakes but i sorta ignored her complaining for like a week and after that she didnt care. Shes still never held one but shes touched them at least and sorta treats them like children now lol. Reminding me to feed/ water them and such...
As for the pay, its probably bc its CT. If you get a job in a hospital usually you can work like 4 10hour days and have 3 days off. Thats pretty nice imo. Until you can get your snakes once you graduate i would focus on your dart frogs an breeding them. I know theyre not snakes but theyre still pretty cool little things.