Do you ever take your snake out in public?

[dboeren]

Some people are afraid of snakes. So what? Some people are afraid of dogs too, but I've never seen people worried they can't take their dogs outside. I've even run into people whose dogs were clearly poorly under control and been told by the people to stay away because the dog might try to bite. THESE guys can take their animals out which are far more likely to harm and far more capable of inflicting serious hurt. Not to mention that you can technically be scared of literally anything. Hey, maybe I'll decide I'm scared of people that look a certain way, or a certain kind of car, or scared of bicycles, or anyone wearing a T-shirt with a certain picture on it. Does that give me the right to ban all these things from the outside world? Probably not. We all should be entitled to our freedoms, so long as we do not harm others.

People may say that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I tend to believe that informed opinions are much more valid than opinions based on ignorance. We recently had a friend come to our house who didn't know I'd recently acquired a snake (she did know we had lizards and a bird). Starting out, she said that if she'd known she may not have been willing to come over. Her daughter wanted to see it, and the mom stayed about 25 feet away, about as far as possible indoors. But by the end of the visit she had come to understand that the snake was harmless and she touched it several times and commented that its skin "felt nice". We didn't force it on her, we just acted to educate and demonstrate (mainly to the daughter) and when she saw her fascination and approached the situation with a more open mind she realized it was just an animal like any other. They took a picture of her touching it to put on Facebook I think.

Now, that doesn't mean you should push a snake or anything else on people that don't want it. Give them the opportunity to stay away if they aren't interested. I bumped into someone who was at the park with their Ball Python a couple months ago and most people just looked from afar and he was fine with that. But if someone wanted to approach and see it up close or touch it, the opportunity was there and he was ready to answer questions, etc...

For reference, what we have is a young carpet python - almost a year old. She's roughly 3 feet long and finger-thick. I have no plans to take her sightseeing in public but I may take her to the front lawn to get some sun and let the neighborhood kids see her. They used to enjoy holding our Bearded Dragon and one of them has a pet Crested Gecko so I figure some of them will like to see a snake too. If someone asked me to take her to their house for their kids to see her or to bring her to a wildlife education event I'd be open to that too but in any of these situations I would remain in control and make sure everyone could stay at a level of exposure that was comfortable to them. I would also try to be careful about the snake's comfort and cut it short if she started behaving in a stressed manner. For instance, since she did get more handling than usual when our friends came over, I made sure to leave her strictly alone for the rest of the day and the next to make sure she would feel secure and kept an eye out for any changes in her normal behavior. Once I saw there were none, I felt free to resume normal occasional handling.