Throughout my childhood, if someone asked me what I feared most I would always say ‘snakes’. Contrary to this professed phobia, which is believed to be an innate fear in humans, I was fascinated by the idea of finding snakes in the wild and would spend hours in the fields close to my parents’ home and alongside the railway line, where they were believed to bask, hoping to see them. Despite the efforts however, sightings were rare; a glimpse of a grass snake in a field of thick grass once; the discovery of a dead grass snake on the side of the road from which I cut off the tail as a trophy; and the even rarer sight of an adder swimming across a pond and slithering into the undergrowth very close to my feet. Beyond such fleeting encounters, my fascination and curiosity remained limited to studying them through the glass of zoo and reptile centre enclosures and watching documentaries.

I was in my late twenties and married before I took the opportunity to handle a snake for the first time. I still remember the occasion well as it was during a ‘reptile encounter’ session at a zoo local to my home to which we had taken some young relations on a day out.  Recollections of the snake itself are a bit fuzzy but I seem to remember it being a young python or boa constrictor about a metre long. What I remember more than anything is my heart pounding and my hands shaking as I took hold of the creature for the first time. Typical of such scenarios however, that initial fear turned quickly to wonder and also the realisation that the experience was very different from the one I had perhaps imagined.

Continue reading →