Am I a freak?

[Cj3cooper]

it might not seem that there is harm in doing this but as jonno said, if you have a phobia of dogs then everyday you leave the house then you will expect to be somehow confronted with a dog. the same cant be said for someone who as another member has said, goes down to bunnings to buy a new toilet seat. this forum aside, if you took a random survey of people at bunnings as to their fears with snakes i would say around 50% would have some fear of snakes. i doubt the number would be anywhere near as high as some fear of dogs.

now obviously we fear some dogs more than others but to your average joe, a snake is a snake regardless of its species or whether it bites.

i dont agree with taking your reptiles out and about for walks etc, especially snakes. I think they should only be taken out for necessary reasons like vets or buying/selling or for educational presentations if your a demonstrator.
i dont want to slander anyone, especially a newbie as we have all made errors in judgement but in my humble opinion they should not be taken out.
on another note im pretty sure its illegal to take snake out just for a joyride, the only times its legal is the reasons i gave above but it might be different in other states.

coops

 

[derekm]

G'day Alex,

The big difference is that dogs are a part of every day life for someone who has a phobia. To lead any sort of normal life they must first be able to deal with coming into close contact with dogs occasionally. It is also beneficial for dogs to be walked and socialised.

A couple of points. With dogs, it isn't necessarily a phobia. Many people in Australia come from places where dogs are not kept as pets and are seen as a potential source of serious diseases (e.g. rabies) and infection. Such people have a very reasonable fear of dogs, not a phobia and, in my opinion, they have the right to not come into close contact with dogs if they wish.
My wife has a guide dog and I get to see, pretty much on a daily basis, how people react to dogs in shopping centres and other public places. Without seeing it, I would never have believed that such a high proportion of people react with fear to the near presence of a dog, even an always-smiling golden retriever in a full harness like my wife's dog.
What this has taught me is that, while we all love our own pets and want to spend time with them, we should never assume that other people want our pets around them and that we should never place our pets in situations where other people cannot easily avoid undesired close proximity to them. In my opinion, this applies to dogs, cats, reptiles and all other pet animals.

 

[carpetmuncher]

talking about the young girl they saw walking her pet python.

don't for a minute think that they are saying anything positive. if you crave that much attention, i'm sure you don't need the snake. do pole dancing or get filthy big tatts and piercings, people look at that sort of stuff. i hope you make the right decision in future.i vote for freak.

 

[carpetmuncher]

your not a freak, its just a reflection on them and how narrow-minded they are, and when people point and stare just say something smart they wont understand to them, and just smile and dont be affected, works for me.


Will

i can understand all the 12 year olds out there thinking it's cool, but people only view you as a fool for walking around with a snake around your neck, and saying 'something smart' i think is unlikely. notwithstanding, there are conditions on your licence about when your reptiles may leave the premises, and going down the shops is a breach of your licence... take some responsibilty. further, there are hygiene and thermo considerations that you 12 year olds probably shouldn't be given the power to make decisions about. perhaps you should evaluate the real reason why you keep reptiles, if you think they are just a cool accessory, maybe you should find some other form of attention seeking.

you could guarantee that all the kids who think it's ok are all steve irwin worshippers as well.

 

[Chris1]

its a bit rough calling her an attention seeker for taking her snake to the pet shop TO CHECK OUT FOOD SIZE! (ie, there was a point to her taking it out!!), i've shoved a snake down my top and taken it to the petshop after i bought mice that were way too big,..plus petshops tend to ask people to bring their snakes in if theyve been buying rats for a while,..!!

you can tell how stressed ur snake was by the number of holes it left in you since stressed snakes tend to BITE!!.

as for thermoregulating, my oldest bredli is out of his tank fro 6-12 hours some days (normally only 3 or 4)
his cage is left open when hes out and in 3 years of doing that with him hes only gone back in voluntarily once to get some heat. i doubt a few hours is gonna do any damage to him.
He also comes to work from time to time, (the photographers love taking him into the studio for shoots) the most snake phobic of the people at work are the ones that ask me to bring him in.

 

[Cj3cooper]

its a bit rough calling her an attention seeker for taking her snake to the pet shop TO CHECK OUT FOOD SIZE!

i dont think anyone has an issue with taking it to the pet shop to check food size, with me the issue arises out of taking it to bunnings with it draped around her neck afterwards. i know its a pain to to have to make a specialist trip to the pet shop to do something like that and maybe her parents were unwilling to do so but as other members have said, if the trip to bunnings after was unavoidable then it would have been better to wait in the car with it in a bag or even wait outside the car with it in a bag.

coops

 

[Snake Catcher Victoria]

On Monday i was called to a local busy intersection by wildlife victoria to ensure the safety of a mother duck and ducklings as they tried to cross the road.
Its that time of year.
As I was holding up the traffic and waving other traffic through, a guy leaned out his window and yelled out " YOUR A F>>N FREAK" and gave me the finger.
Fortunatly for this tool, he just drove away and didnt give me a chance to talk to him.
So, just being an animal lover can put you in the category of freak.
And also, when I was a kid i took snakes to school, even caught them at school and they got housed, not handled and used for education...
Im not saying to do it but wearing a snake to bunnings would probably be less stressfull for a snake than being passed around a kids party of school classroom for hours on end.

 

[redbellybite]

On Monday i was called to a local busy intersection by wildlife victoria to ensure the safety of a mother duck and ducklings as they tried to cross the road.
Its that time of year.
As I was holding up the traffic and waving other traffic through, a guy leaned out his window and yelled out " YOUR A F>>N FREAK" and gave me the finger.
Fortunatly for this tool, he just drove away and didnt give me a chance to talk to him.
So, just being an animal lover can put you in the category of freak.
And also, when I was a kid i took snakes to school, even caught them at school and they got housed, not handled and used for education...
Im not saying to do it but wearing a snake to bunnings would probably be less stressfull for a snake than being passed around a kids party of school classroom for hours on end.

nailed it in one hit Baz ...as an adult no I wouldnt ..but as a 12 year old kid ..no doubt I wouldve ...I took a rbbs in a jar at the age of 7 to school it freaked alot out and the thing was it was dead ...but I loved the reaction /attention what ever you want to label it ...kids think differently then adults ...I am pretty sure now Jordo knows not to do it again after this write up ...

 

[JupiterCreek]

ssssnakeman said: "On Monday i was called to a local busy intersection by wildlife victoria to ensure the safety of a mother duck and ducklings as they tried to cross the road."

We all have our own frame of reference, and commonsense or economics don't always win out over anthropomorphism. We get the ducks on the road and koalas crossing the freeways messages on radio here in Adelaide. There's a shortage of ducks or koalas in Adelaide? I don't think so. That show on TV... RSPCA Animal Rescue. The cats up trees or stuck in wall cavities, deaf dog stuck in a rock crevice. I'm sorry but I see that as a huge waste of resources.

Here in Adelaide at the moment we have Panda-mania with a couple of giant pandas due to arrive soon. As someone said on the radio why pay money and line up to see an odd looking animal that has to eat a diet high in fibre and rarely has sex... If I want to see that I can just look in the mirror!

 

[Snake Catcher Victoria]

I dont think what i was doing was a waste of resources at all.
They rang me to ask if i could help, i wasnt doing anything else, apart from recovering from phillip island gp, so i drove the three blocks to the intersection, we caught the ducks after getting them over the road, and took them to the local duckpond.
Would you rather the "resources" be spent on brown bread and porn?

 

[Slyther83]

You really shouldn't be bringing your snake into random stores. Setting aside the common fear people have for snakes you may also appear to be an attention seeker by taking it all over the place in public, which probably accounts for the people whispering and such..

 

[Palex134]

****** the haters

 

[JupiterCreek]

I dont think what i was doing was a waste of resources at all.
They rang me to ask if i could help, i wasnt doing anything else, apart from recovering from phillip island gp, so i drove the three blocks to the intersection, we caught the ducks after getting them over the road, and took them to the local duckpond.
Would you rather the "resources" be spent on brown bread and porn?

I'm not sure just how your ad hominen argument relating brown bread and porn to ducks on a public road is relevant?

Were these the last ducks of an endangered species? If so then they should be captured and relocated to a suitable location and introduced to a breeding colony. If not then perhaps someone who has the time and resources to safely usher the ducks out of harm's way can do so, but let's not expend resources on them. I was a driving instructor in the 1980s and you'd be amazed at the number of people who said the correct course of action when confronted by an animal on the road was to swerve around the animal. Should we go so far as to suggest the life of a duck and its young in some way equates to a human life, or injury to a human with the medical and social costs associated?

 

[MercuryRising]

don't for a minute think that they are saying anything positive. if you crave that much attention, i'm sure you don't need the snake. do pole dancing or get filthy big tatts and piercings, people look at that sort of stuff. i hope you make the right decision in future.i vote for freak.

LOL! pole dancing! :twisted: g0Ld!

 

[Palex134]

I'm not sure just how your ad hominen argument relating brown bread and porn to ducks on a public road is relevant?

Were these the last ducks of an endangered species? If so then they should be captured and relocated to a suitable location and introduced to a breeding colony. If not then perhaps someone who has the time and resources to safely usher the ducks out of harm's way can do so, but let's not expend resources on them.

You begin your argument by claiming that if there is no threat of extinction for a given population, then it is therefore no longer justifiably acceptable to worry about specific individual's existence. Though you later hint at this in a different manor, what if they were children crossing the sidewalk? There are way too many people, why do we need to worry if your kids or your sister's kids die?

Should we go so far as to suggest the life of a duck and its young in some way equates to a human life, or injury to a human with the medical and social costs associated?

Who are you to decide on an elevated hierarchy where humans are higher up then any other non-human animal? Say you are right and the person swerving in your example ultimately dies as a result...based on your previous arguement...since humans aren't endangered and aren't there enough people already, who cares about a single individual and it's offspring (in the back seat?)?


Your post put way to much emphasis on population dynamics and way too little giving a **** about something other than yourself.

 

[Alexandra]

Yeah, I would be careful bringing snakes into public, people have SERIOUS phobias. My boyfriend's mum bursts into tears and starts shaking like mad if she see's a snake, even in an enclosure.

 

[JupiterCreek]

Who are you to decide on an elevated hierarchy where humans are higher up then any other non-human animal?

I take it as a given that we've evolved to be the peak organism on our planet. With that comes the responsibility to have regard for other species, but not to the detriment of our own, and always allowing that decisions we make affecting other species may ultimately affect our own survival and viability.

 

[Cj3cooper]

as one of those people that frequently waste my time and resources on animal rescues i can say im proud of the fact that i do it. dont denigrate the efforts of others if they actually want to donate their time and resources into moving an animal out of harms way instead of seeing it killed on the road.

If there's something wrong, those who have the ability to take action, have the responsibility to take action.

coops.

 

[fritzi2009]

did you not read her bloody post everyone?
she didnt choose to go out in public with the snake for *******ts and giggles. she didnt realise she had to go other places after she went to the pet shop, and yeh fair enough she couldnt stay in the car thats not her fault. if it was my young kid i wouldnt want them stayin in the car alone either with the amount of crime you see these days.
and even if she was older, would you love your snake unattended in the car is no tub, nothing? that would be called irresponsible aswell no? she can't win either way?
i didnt think so. its not her fault so maybe everyone should back off ? im sick of people flaming about nothing on this website, its getting really old really quick, and it just seems about anything can put you in position to cop a floggin on here.
end rant

 

[JupiterCreek]

as one of those people that frequently waste my time and resources on animal rescues i can say im proud of the fact that i do it. dont denigrate the efforts of others if they actually want to donate their time and resources into moving an animal out of harms way instead of seeing it killed on the road.

If there's something wrong, those who have the ability to take action, have the responsibility to take action.

coops.

I don't and I didn't.


And Tara, believe it or not I'm with you. The more that can be done to demystify this "secret herpetologists business" and make the hobby accessible to people of all ages the better, and in her own way I think that's what Rainbow-Serpent was doing. Quite probably her main error in judgement was writing about it on here. ;-)