In the spirit of Snake Awareness Day I thought it might be cool to have a thread where we could discuss our efforts in introducing people to reptiles and educating them about them. This has become a real interest of mine lately for a number of reasons including the recent State and Federal legislation plus my natural inclination to fight ignorance when possible.
So all that having been said, let me start. Here's a picture from a presentation that I did with my friend Shannon who runs the
MOV Reptile House (and from whom we adopted our Sidney and Malaki) last Friday. It was a group of home schooled kids and 3 parents. The kids had great questions and showed no fear at all even when I managed to get myself bit 4 times by one of the kingsnakes.
And here's another one with the bitey kingsnake. He'd calmed down really well by this point but I still contained his head carefully when I let the kids touch him. Shannon gave a running commentary about the animals while I showed them around.
I also had the opportunity last week to introduce some of the neighborhood kids I'm friendly with to our boa and our JCP. They had tons of questions and even the littlest one was eager to pet them and discuss the differences in how they felt and looked. Cool stuff.
But the one I'm most excited about was our friend Cindy because Cindy has a genuine, intense fear of snakes but wanted to overcome it. She'd been working up to actually holding a snake for about a month, watching a feeding and petting ones Becky and I were holding. But yesterday she decided it was time to actually hold one on her own and she decided it was 'Go big or go home!' and picked Malaki as who she wanted to hold first. She was nervous but not unduly so and I kept Malaki's head for all but about 10 seconds while this picture was taken but she did it and is eager to try again in a few days. The best thing is that she's going to bring her son and a friend of his who are interested in seeing the snakes. Keep the chain going!
So let's hear your stories and see your pics of times you've spent introducing people to reptiles and educating them about our scaly friends.
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