The same sad comments about my snakes... (vent)

[Crowfingers]

I realized that my lip always quivers (in alertness) when people ask me more in-depth things about my snakes/snake info now, because I get on high alert if they're going to insult me again/make fun of me/make another pointless joke about putting my snakes with my birds to see what will happen. -__- ??!?!?

Why would anyone think this is funny to me? What do they expect me to do, be like, "OH HA HA YEAH, THEY'LL EAT THEM!!! HA HA HA!"

I not only get these questions about my snake, but since I work at a wildlife rehabilitation center and do education programs with some of our permitted 'animal ambassadors'; I get these kind of rude insulting questions all the time - especially when I am working with our opossum. People come right up and interrupt whatever question I'm answering for an honestly interested person and say things like:

"Eww, it's so ugly!" or "If I see one of those in my yard I shoot it, or let my dogs out so they can chase it away / kill it" or the always fun "I've hit a bunch of them with my car" (sometimes people admit that they even do it on purpose)

The worst is when people stand through our entire presentation (which usually contains selected patient stories, what are goals are as a veterinary facility, and then the stories of what ever education animals we have with us that day) then afterwords say things like "I wouldn't help so injured snake / hawk / opossum. It's nature, things get sick and die" or "Why bother, they're just animals".

And through it all I have to maintain a professional demeanor, it can be really hard. Especially since 90% of our patients are sick or injured directly because of people like that. I get really defensive when people talk like that about our animals (or any animal), and it does hurt when it's directed at something you love, so I know how you feel 100%.