Snakes Are Not So Bad

I am not afraid of snakes.

You read that right.

I am a girl and I am not afraid of snakes.

I will not kill a snake, unless it is poisonous and in my yard. Maybe not even then. My policy--they go their way, and I go mine. Everyone is happy, and nobody dies.

Throw a snake into the mix, anywhere, anytime, and people lose their minds. Except in Sweetwater, Texas, where they have that Rattlesnake Roundup yearly for the tourists.

The one that ends up suffering is the snake. Odds are good that the snake wants to leave the scene when a human shows up, because snakes see us as a threat. Since some of us lose our minds and act like idiots around them by trying to kill them, the snakes are right to fear us.

Snakes serve a purpose, believe it or not. They kill and eat mice, rats, and other critters which would otherwise explode in population. Mice and rats can carry various diseases that are harmful to people, in addition to getting into our homes and eating our food. The snakes are doing us a favor by taking care of them before they get into our house. Just the thought of a mouse or a rat in the house gives me the heebie-jeebies, even though I know that my cats would immediately locate and kill it. I don't want to have to get blood and rat guts out of the carpet.

I am not afraid of snakes. However, my husband is terrified of them. Frozen in his tracks, eyes bulging, heart pumping, hyperventilating--just plain scared. There's no rhyme or reason for his fear--I have the same initial reaction to cockroaches.

It's not the fear. It's the overreaction that bothers me.

The best antidote to fear is knowledge. Learn what kinds of snakes live in your area and what they look like. Learn how likely you are to see a particular kind of snake. I have only seen ONE poisonous snake in my entire life, for instance. (I imagine that if I lived on a farm or in the woods, I would see more, but I am a city chick.)

If you do see a poisonous snake, don't shoot it. Nobody has good aim when they are screaming their head off. Don't try to catch it, because you'll end up getting bitten, and anti-venom is expensive. Call animal control. They have people specially trained to handle these situations without getting bitten.