I've been keeping snakes for a long time, and as I approach my third decade of association with them, I am starting to change my perception of how we interact with them.

Yesterday I had to take my oldest children's python (17 years old!) to the vet.

She hasn't eaten for 8 weeks and is starting to lose a bit of mass. She is shedding perfect and behaving normally - but she just won't eat.

Anyway, we were at the vet's for about 2 hours. She was an angel through the exam and then she had to endure a blood test for a CPC, an antibiotic injection and a force feeding.

She took it like a trooper and at one point, I looked into the back room and saw two techs holding her body down while her head poked up and calmly surveyed the scene.

I've been around her for a long, long time and could tell that as they brought her back - that she was agitated. She was rigidly coiled around the tech's arm but as I went into the hall to greet her, she must have caught wind of me because she almost jumped right of the tech's arm to get to me.

We had to wait about 15 minutes for the vet to come back in and explain her course of treatment. The whole time, she coiled her tail around my index and middle fingers and laid placidly on my chest - no nosing around - just contentedly laying with her head on my heart.

We can go around and around on how cognitive snakes are. I can tell you this -and you can ascribe any explanation you want to it - that animal took comfort in my presence after a tough ordeal. When she refused to cooperate with the vet for the mouth examination, it was me she let open her jaws up so they could have a look inside.

Over the years I've taken snakes in that were deemed "mean" or aggressive and with a little patience and respect, have turned them into wonderful pets. Maybe snakes have pea sized brains incapable of computing anything but eating, drinking and making more snakes, but I have seen enough examples of them taking comfort in their owner's presence and repaying respect and patience with calm behavior to think that they can be neatly labeled.

Yesterday was the kicker for me - I have a large collection of pet snakes that I actively spend interacting with. Whether my little children's girl makes it or not, she and I got a bit closer yesterday. It saddens me that I may lose her, but at the same time I can let her go knowing that after 16.5 years - pea sized brain or not - she knows who I am and associates me with comfort and security.