Why I think people are so afraid of snakes:

[kitedemon]

Gale,
This is very very true! Our little one eyed girl is the snake I will use to introduce fearful people too. She is disarming that way. Add that she is super calm and very very chill doesn't hurt. Our vet loves her, it is funny, when she goes for a check up the whole office turns up to visit her. I don't know if it is because she has one eye or that she was tube fed for the first 4 months of her life (micro small twin her sibling was normal and she was smaller than a baby corn.) But in either case she is super calm no matter what you do to her. It is hard to be afraid of her she is 0% threatening.

You know adding to this theme a little. I adopted a lovely normal female who was born without eyes.

She is my spokesnake. People are drawn to animals with deformities or disabilities. Dog with three legs, cat with one eye, you all know what I mean.

Well, Athena has proven irresistible to people because she has no eyes. Even people who will get as far away as they can from a baby ball python or cornsnake, cannot help but be drawn to her. As soon as they hear she was born eyeless, they have to get close enough to see for themselves. And once they can see it, the questions start. How does she eat ? Can she see in heat with no eyes ? Does it hurt her that she can't see ? And on and on.

I tell them she eats just fine. Yes she can see in heat, in fact she can see you just fine. No, it doesn't hurt her or affect her in any way that she cannot see. Because she was born this way, she has no idea she's not just the same as any other ball python. Fascination draws them in, and before they know it, most want to hold her. Or at least pet her. They begin to talk to her, and tell each other how cool it is when she "looks" at them.

As she grows, she becomes even more interesting to people, because obviously she has a good life or she could not be so big and healthy. And people just can't comprehend she can have a normal life with no eyes. She has done more to educate people on "dangerous" ball pythons in the few months I've had her than years of me trying to tell people about them.

Gale