• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

What do people say when you own a snake?

Over Thanksgiving week I finally got to meet my brother in law's friend Troscoe, from New York.
Sooo how am I introduced?
"Hey this is my sister in law Beth. She breeds snakes".

Troscoe was quite intrigued, but said he didn't like the way snakes smell.
I asked him about that. Well, it seems he has been musked by something!


Once someone overheard me mention one of my snakes. They asked," do you have a snake?".
Smiling sweetly, I answered,"no, I have 27".

That was before I got my last few :)
 
Usually, I get up and down looks (I am a VERY femme lady, almost 21 and I look a bit nerdy) and a "YOU have a snake?" as if it's so freaking weird to have GOOD taste in pets. I've had a few positive reactions - my best friend squealed and a co worker (who is in her sixties) started talking about the iguanas she used to have and how much she loved snakes. Ahaha.. It was awesome.

It's when I start talking about wanting geckos (crestiiiiies) that people relax. Lizards, apparently, are okay. Not so much with snakes.
 
I mostly get..."in your house????!!!!!" The others almost say cool. Most of the people I work with know that I'm the "snake lady" and usually they introduce me to someone by saying..."she breeds snakes. They live IN THE HOUSE!!!" At least they aren't killing them outright anymore. They usually bring pictures of them now so I can identify them. They've even stopped their husbands from killing them because they knew I'd "be mad". LOL! One of the gals even brought me a little Brown snake she caught in the garden. I took it home and put it in mine.
 
I get mixed results. I was raised in a house where I could have ANY pet I wanted and could afford, except for a snake. Snakes were gross, and for a while, I couldnt stand the thought of feeding them live mice. My dad still will not sit in the same room with them. If I come in with a snake, he leaves. My mom can sit on the couch next to them, but she wont touch them. I was amazed when we were all sitting at the table and she told her best friend that they were probably the best pet to have. Easy to feed and house. My sister hates them, but she took me to my first herp show recently. My grandma, who always chopped the gopher snakes into pieces we found in the chicken pens, loves my snakes. She wont touch them, but she is amazed at their colors. My other grandma will not sit in the same room if I have one out, but she hates my mice too.

As for people I just meet wherever, Im talking about animals already, so they ask what I have. I start with my snakes and see how it goes. I get the, "Eww, why do you want those?" and the "Are they poisonous?" questions all the time. I love correcting people about the poisonous/venomous thing, they always get a weird look on their face like, What's the difference? I listed all of my animals to my friend's mom yesterday and she asked about the snakes. They have a turtle, and she thought it was pretty cool. I've actually noticed that I get a more positive reaction from older people. Most of my friends my age just think they are disgusting.
 
Lucky for you, you don't have to feed live. Frozen/thawed takes the ewww out of feeding for the most part.
 
Oh, I know,lol. That was years ago, when I was 7 or so. I didnt know about F/T at the time, because I wasnt allowed a snake. Now I have 5 snakes and live mice!
 
I usually get mixed reactions. Most are either along the lines of 'ew...' to being very inquisitive. It's very rewarding since most people like to ask questions about it and usually come out of the conversation much more okay with the concept of having snakes as a pet than originally.

It was actually very funny- my family was trying to sell our house earlier this month (now sold), and my parents had a meeting with the prospective (at the time) buyers. My mom mentinoed I had snakes, and apparently the other couple was just like, '....what?' Of course, my mom being who she is, continued on to the horror of the couple to say that I was planning on breeding them, etc. Luckily my dad kicked her under the table before the frozen mice came up, I'm not sure if they'd've bought the house!:rofl:
 
:laugh01:

We got that reaction too! My room was definitely the most scary while we were trying to sell our house. Everyone was amazed by my Bearded Dragon, but the snakes freaked them all out. :rofl:
 
I get the reaction of "Ew...Why?" more than anything. My sis-in-law is petrified. Few say "Cool" and ask me about them. But by far the oddest response I have gotten is from my friend who is a chef "Oh cool. How big are they now? Ok let me know when they get a little more meat on their bones. I know a great recipie for them." Some of my friends are even stranger than me believe it or not.... and that is saying something.
 
Since my family is from Mexico and many people over there(Some they know) get killed by rattlesnake they think all snakes are venemous. It's a small village barely getting technology we know so they really never seen constrictors through internet or educational T.V. shows like us.
 
ZoologyMajor said:
I get the reaction of "Ew...Why?" more than anything. My sis-in-law is petrified. Few say "Cool" and ask me about them. But by far the oddest response I have gotten is from my friend who is a chef "Oh cool. How big are they now? Ok let me know when they get a little more meat on their bones. I know a great recipie for them." Some of my friends are even stranger than me believe it or not.... and that is saying something.
Click to expand...
Ground up snake tastes like salt made from chicken.:shrugs:
 
I brought my corn Sam to school for my Child Development class, where the kids are preschool age. I think really only one girl was scared, but most of them were so excited to see a real life snake. One of the girls was a little too enthusiastic about it, lol she kept trying to grab his head and all of that, but lucky for me(and her) Sam is a really mellow snake. Its kind of funny, I know more girls in my school who like snakes than boys. I told my German teacher I was going to bring in one of my snakes and she said she would throw me in a lake in Germany (I'm going there this summer for a class trip) and leave me there. It was funny.
 
My IRL friends just act like they did not hear me. Like I'm going through a faze in my life And they usually have this look on their face as if I am endangering my kids or what were you thinking. I just get a lot of hmmmmmms. so I don't talk about them & they don't ask about them.

My son wants to bring our oldest corn to his first grade class when its his wk for share. Its his wk in April & Little Dani will be a yr old & BIGGER...lol So I'm not sure how to ask the teacher. My son always draws pics of his snakes in class & has told everyone so I am sure she knows.
 
Lol good thread.

I usually get 'gross', 'eww', 'what the hell!?' Or 'why?'. Occasionally I get the cool person that'll say 'wow, what snakes do you have?', or 'awesome, I love snakes!'

At first it really annoyed me when people made nasty comments or blindly questioned it. But now, unless they have a genuine phobia, I just laugh at their ignorance. When my snake grows up a bit more, I'm gonna bring him to school one day, and show my biology class. There's one girl in there that has 6 boas I think.

An argument to use against the old 'they belong in the wild' line, would be to say:

Do you think the modern-day domesticated dog has always been so? Every domesticated animal was taken from the wild at some point, and through rigorous breeding they became tame and domesticated. When they took wild dogs did they immediately bond to you and 'love' you? I doubt it. The same thing is now happening with snakes, only many hundreds of years later. Because animals weren't originally domesticated to be used as pets, they were taken because they could be used for something. Horses could be ridden and could pull heavy loads, dogs would be used for hunting, cattle for food etc. Snakes wouldn't have served a purpose back in earlier times, so they were never domesticated, but now, they can simply be our companions like dogs are today.

However, I doubt snakes will come to love us like dogs to anytime soon, since they're mostly instinct with little intelligence.

So if you can actually be bothered to argue with people like that, then I guess you could say stuff like that lol.

All the best

David
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top