Performing with snakes: Too Stressful for BPs?

[enginee837]

I probably should have clarified that my snake died just under 11 months after I last performed with him. I sometimes took him out on the porch or in the yard on humid days, but he died in March in Ohio; I hadn't taken him out of the house since the previous August or September--it tends to get too cold in Ohio after that. The fact that he died from a bacterial infection threw me off because I was meticulous about maintaining the cleanliness of his enclosure. Before he died, I had been having trouble maintaining the humidity in his enclosure, so I had changed him to a tub. I told the vet all of this, but he focused on my performing with him. I guess I'll never know for sure, but I am worried that performing added to his stress levels, though he was eating and shedding fairly frequently in the 11 months between his last performance and his death.

I thank you all for your responses, but they do concern me because of those I know who perform with snakes, and of the snake educators I know, like BGSU's Dr. Underwood, with whom I used to take BPs and other reptiles into classrooms to educate children when I was an undergrad way back when. Is this also dangerously stressful for BPs?

I promise I'm not trying to be argumentative, and I truly apologize if I'm coming off that way. I'm just getting a lot of contradictory information about snakes, and I want to be clear and well informed so I can be the best possible pet owner I can be with my next BP.

I also taught many educational classes with kids many years ago with everything from Burmese to bar necked scrub pythons. All were tame enough handle and none of the ones we used stressed out from it. All ate regularly and acted normal. With that said, not all of the snakes that we interacted with were cut out for regular interaction. It was not species specific either, some individuals tolerated it and some did not. It all came down to paying close attention to all of your specimens. Keeping good feeding/shed/behavior records and documenting what if anything had an adverse affect on any of the above mentioned. In the end our best girl was a beautiful female aru local chondro. She would eat while hanging from your arm. Never even hinted at wanting to strike out of aggression or defense and tolerated being handled all day by anyone that wanted to hold her (provided ambient conditions permitted it).
You also need to realize that sometimes snakes just get sick and pass and there is not much you will be able to do about it. Yes stress can play a factor but just like people, each individual snake is different and some are just not as hardy as others. I would not beat yourself up too much over this.