WHY?

Why do people hate snakes so much?  When I was a kid, my brother and I would go looking for them. Of course, we knew the ones with the wedge shape heads and eyes with pupils that went upwards were the "bad" snakes, but we went anyway knowing the dangers. I love the feel of snakeskin on a live snake. It is NOT slimy - it is SILKY. The beauty of each scale is also marvelous, as is the entire coloring and patterning. Their little pink, red or black forked tongues slipping in and out of their mouths are so delicate. Have you ever examined a snake as closely? I'll bet not. 

When my kids were in their summertime exploration mindset, I gave them each a plastic bucket and told them to hunt for snakes and catch a couple and to pick them up, with a stick if they were afraid to touch them, and put them in their pails and bring them to me to see. Once in a while, they would be lucky, as I told them just where to look and what to look for before picking them up. Now, I guess I was actually giving them a challenge, but then, in my mind, I was just sending them out on a nature hunting adventure.

None of us will ever forget the time one of the snake finders gave their youngest sister a small garter snake in her playpen. She was about 1 1/2 years old.  That child picked it up, and then BIT into it! Right in the middle! She made a face and then looked to see what she had done. It was a totally unexpected event and everyone who was watching her "play" with her first snake was shocked. We never killed our catches and "look and release" was the  result after thorough inspection.

One time, as an adult, I was in a field picking wildflowers when I looked down and saw that my feet were placed right next to a coiled up snake. I looked closely and determined it to be of the poisonous variety and stood very still while calling my husband to get his gun and come and shoot it. He did. To our dismay and great horror, we had killed a plain ol'e watersnake with the body markings of a copperhead, and her encapsulated babies had been blown out, still in their sacs and wiggling, all around us. There were many. How ashamed we were. The lake watersnakes are nonvenomous and are important to our environment. 

Why do people hate snakes? They are awesome creatures in countless ways. I think many people are uninformed of so much nature gives us.