Whats the worst BP Myth you've ever heard?

[redshepherd]

After I first got Cake and posted it on facebook... can not believe the response I received from my friends HAHAH. The kind of comments that are half joking but implying half serious, you know?

I've gotten:

"Have you seen the movie Anaconda?"
me: "No."
"You should watch it."

... implying that somehow, watching the movie Anaconda will make me fear snakes, as if I didn't know what I was getting myself into?

And another immediate response after I got Cake:

"There was this guy in another state who had a pet cottonmouth. He kissed it on the mouth and he got bitten in the face."
As he waited for my response to decide to NOT want a ball python...

I guess those aren't exactly myths and I'm kind of on a tangent here. But essentially the level of misunderstanding people have about snakes in general...

[Penultimate]

Oh here's a fun one... earlier this year, I did an experiment on ball python feeding habits (and whether conditioning seems to do anything to help) and brought it to school. The parents of other kids came in to look and one came up to me and said something to the effect of, "What?! Pythons? Honestly, what kind of parent would let their kids have one of these? Let alone more than one! Don't they know that Satan is inside each one? They are nothing but cold blooded killing machines." Looking down at me disgustedly, he began to lecture me about how one day my pets would "grow to be twenty feet long and eat me before escaping to the wild and would eat children playing on the streets". It was like he expected me to go home and kill every one of them. I was struggling between laughing, being angry and being a little scared of this guy. So I did what any irritated teenager would do... ok, maybe not. I told him every ball python fact I could remember and stuff into five minutes. I started by telling him where they were from, the burrows they live in, what size they grow to, how they're considered sacred in some places, what they eat, their defensive behavior, their color morphs, prices of various morphs, personalities, housing, heating, lighting (or lack thereof), how to breed them and why they make great pets. Yes, I can speak very quickly. Looking quite stunned with wide eyes and a half open mouth, the guy backed away slowly and walked off while I was in the middle of a sentence. I watched him wandering around for a while looking a bit dazed. A boy from my class was just standing nearby with his eyebrows raised before he laughed a little. Don't insult my pets. I will overload your brain.

[redshepherd]

Oh here's a fun one... earlier this year, I did an experiment on ball python feeding habits (and whether conditioning seems to do anything to help) and brought it to school. The parents of other kids came in to look and one came up to me and said something to the effect of, "What?! Pythons? Honestly, what kind of parent would let their kids have one of these? Let alone more than one! Don't they know that Satan is inside each one? They are nothing but cold blooded killing machines." Looking down at me disgustedly, he began to lecture me about how one day my pets would "grow to be twenty feet long and eat me before escaping to the wild and would eat children playing on the streets". It was like he expected me to go home and kill every one of them. I was struggling between laughing, being angry and being a little scared of this guy. So I did what any irritated teenager would do... ok, maybe not. I told him every ball python fact I could remember and stuff into five minutes. I started by telling him where they were from, the burrows they live in, what size they grow to, how they're considered sacred in some places, what they eat, their defensive behavior, their color morphs, prices of various morphs, personalities, housing, heating, lighting (or lack thereof), how to breed them and why they make great pets. Yes, I can speak very quickly. Looking quite stunned with wide eyes and a half open mouth, the guy backed away slowly and walked off while I was in the middle of a sentence. I watched him wandering around for a while looking a bit dazed. A boy from my class was just standing nearby with his eyebrows raised before he laughed a little. Don't insult my pets. I will overload your brain.

Oh hey... I've also gotten the "spawn of Satan" thing that apparently applies to all snakes. Except from one of my friends, half jokingly.

I'm sorry friend, but they are simply another boring reptile that hides in a hole and sleeps all day and eats some rats and rolls into a ball when they're frightened. Spawn of Satan is really too grand.

[Penultimate]

Oh hey... I've also gotten the "spawn of Satan" thing that apparently applies to all snakes. Except from one of my friends, half jokingly.

I'm sorry friend, but they are simply another boring reptile that hides in a hole and sleeps all day and eats some rats and rolls into a ball when they're frightened. Spawn of Satan is really too grand.

I find that one pretty hilarious. I mean... it's just another animal. Why is my pet in particular the spawn of Satan because it has no legs? I wonder if they'd say that about legless lizards.

[duckschainsaw]

I had a lady tell me once, completely straight faced, that they get out of their tanks at night and strangle people. She was serious, too.

[h20hunter]

I have an aunt that was a bit over concered...she asked what I would think when "the serpent got out and strangled" my son.

[Artemisace]

I have a few large snakes and I constantly get the "they're going to eat you and your whole family" thing a lot. The one I detest the most would have to be that somehow "all" snakes are "poisonous" and that I should get rid of them before I and my family are killed. I mean really? I live with my sister and her daughte, I would own venomous animals if I was paid to.

snake room

[Daniel.michelle]

This isnt about bp's but...

i was at the zoo this one time and thet had 2 animals out in tubs. (the employees has them in clear tubs and educating people about them etc.) And this lady... oh my gosh this lady... she started going off on the employees about how the snakes should not be allowed out of their enclosures and that theyre venomous and will kill you. The employees were only volunteers i think. They were stunned by her she was being so nasty. (She had to be asked to leave)

Legless lizards. They werent even snakes... it was their pair of legless lizards.

I had heared stories, but up until then i thought they were a bit stretched and that people couldnt possibly be so ignorant. I was wrong. They were beautiful legless lizards tho.

[DVirginiana]

My favorite that you hear for almost every reptile is that they will only grow to the size of their enclosure. And for garters, that they eat crickets. Which is ridiculous. When I got my BP everyone was telling me to be careful and not let it eat me because it was like a week after that African rock python killed two kids in Canada. At the time she could fit in the palm of my hand.

Another fun one for snakes in general is kind of localized to the rural South, but people say that if you have a snake in your house and bake a chocolate pie and sit it in a cabinet, the snake will go in and you can trap it by closing the door on it. Weirdly, this actually seems to work since it creates a heat source. I don't know where people got the idea that it specifically HAS to be a chocolate pie though.

[jclaiborne]

This isnt about bp's but...

i was at the zoo this one time and thet had 2 animals out in tubs. (the employees has them in clear tubs and educating people about them etc.) And this lady... oh my gosh this lady... she started going off on the employees about how the snakes should not be allowed out of their enclosures and that theyre venomous and will kill you. The employees were only volunteers i think. They were stunned by her she was being so nasty. (She had to be asked to leave)

Legless lizards. They werent even snakes... it was their pair of legless lizards.

I had heared stories, but up until then i thought they were a bit stretched and that people couldnt possibly be so ignorant. I was wrong. They were beautiful legless lizards tho.

I hear some of the best comments at the SD Safari Park and the SD Zoo, I end up hanging around the reptile area just to people watch at this point because it cracks me up. One of my favorites was when they had an albino berm on display (couldn't have been more than 7ft) and everyone was looking at it and it yawned and one of the older ladies standing there goes "good lord it must be looking at us like we are meals it just opened its mouth at us, I could only imagine what that bite would feel like, it just grosses me out" (here comes the shocking part, one of the young girls that was a volunteer there) looks at them and goes "this is a small one, their bite isn't that bad I was working with a WILD CAUGHT Reticulated Burmese python once that was 16ft long and it bit me, those are some of the worst snakes to work with talk about pain." My first reaction was a mix of hmmm and oh cool they have a hybrid here, but it couldn't have been wild caught so I asked and she goes "no no its not a hybrid it is a species of snake that they have found over is asia", and my 6 year old looks at her and goes "no that's not correct I think you are confused, dad lets go this makes my head hurt". Grabs my hand and pulls me away haha.