Thank you! I am terribly prejudiced, but I think the world of my one and only Dum! I have been toying with the idea of getting him a couple of lady friends, but I am picky: I would want to try to find females that match his colors - and either way, I don't have the space or my husband's patience for any more snakes for a while.

I actually did 2 presentations this year - my first ever - and I'm pretty sure the first one went a lot better than the Cub Scout Day Camp; I just didn't have a photographer for the first presentation! I'm a student at the University of Illinois, majoring in Animal Science, and the Animal Science Department had an outreach event in the Spring they called "Petstravaganza" (I REALLY hate the name of it, but it is a nice event); 2008 was actually the 3rd annual occurrence, (and I have been a student for all 3 of those years, but this was the first time I knew of the event to participate in it - they don't advertize it very well, but they still get about 2,000 people to attend each year from the community). I presented my Dum and 2 of my BP's there, and had a blast! It is a fairly large event, and almost all of the other people presenting there were convinced I was the #1 hit with my snakes. I never got to sit down or eat all day long! The nice thing about Petstravaganza though, was that the entire event was geared towards teaching children and their parents about meeting a pet animal's needs, and how to be a responsible pet owner. The key I think, is that people went there in the mindset that they were going to learn something new.

I learned a little too late that the Cub Scout Day Camp was a slightly different audience. I also learned some very important lessons from the kids in the Cub Scout Day Camp, and from how the presentation went:

They had had a long & busy day, and they were hot, tired, and hungry... I was a time-filler while they waited for their parents to pick them up (something that had NOT been mentioned to me in all the correspondence leading up to this event). They were very excited, but I think I was asked if my Dum or my BP were poisonous about 15 times over the course of the hour-or-so-long presentation (that's just one example; there were many questions that were asked repetitively) - I didn't really have their attention. I also went in to this presentation kind of intentionally "winging it;" it worked so well the first time, since I am a hard-core animal science geek and can typically talk about a lot of neat little factoids that one decent question could bring up... but I really didn't understand my audience so well for the Cub Scout Day Camp; their questions weren't the stuff of which an hour is easily filled.

-I should have asked more about my role in the day camp there (I never expected to be a generic time filler).
-I should have prepared a SHORT presentation, and figured out some kind of activity to keep the boys' minds engaged.
-I'm glad I didn't let them touch my animals (though I do wish it would have been possible); they were unruly enough we would have been MOBBED if I had tried!
-I wish I could have found someone I knew to come take pictures of the presentation; a nice lady with the day camp took pictures of me with my camera... but I look awful in most of them, because most were taken while I was speaking

All told, I am still really excited that I finally got started doing some of these presentations, which is something I have been wanting to get involved in for many years! Oh, and of all the insane good luck scenarios, my Dum actually shed his skin no more than 2 days in advance of each presentation. How crazy is that?

~Rebecca



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1.0.0 Dumeril's Boa '04
1.2.1 Ball Pythons




0.2 American Pit Bull Terriers (40lb darling lap dogs:Brandy&Mara)

...and MANY more years' experience in colubrids

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