I agree, the whole "friend" thing just reeks of making excuses.
Not that this even IS a excuse. Who let's their friends mess with their snakes and their enclosures ? I wouldn't even allow that with a corn snake, much less a giant.
And I also agree that I can't really fault the public and community to be outraged and somewhat freaked out. We quickly forget how it is to have a "fear" like that. It is a very real fear to many people and imagining a 14 foot giant snake that could be hiding ANYWHERE probably causes some people some real issues. They do not know or understand snakes like we do. They know them from horror movies, from sensational news reports.
They obviously don't trust snake keepers, either, and can you fault them? Instead of taking responsibility that dude sits there on his steps barefoot with a baby snake in hand, talking about how much of a sweet heart his escaped Burm is. I'm sorry, but that is not how you do damage control. Stand up when you talk to people, offer real information (not just shes a sweetheart), offer solutions, ask for help, print out friggen info and hand it out if need be. DO SOMETHING to portray yourself and your hobby community as something else then careless idiots. Sigh..
I actually do agree that most Giants and other potentially dangerous snakes should not be able to be owned by just anyone. However, how to go about controlling that without this snow balling into a outright ban of all we love ??
I guess all we can do is keep trying to educate, to make the public aware, to proof ourselves as responsible keepers that have our own and others safety as a top priority.
News such as that is just bad. It shows the snake in a bad light and it certainly shows snake owners in a bad light.
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