Since you specifically aimed this at me for personal pleasure... Here are a couple reasons:



1. I teach younger people about snakes, I believe that even the presence of a venomous snakes would make their parents uncomfortable. If I did have one, I do not intend to free handle it, I don't see the point of spending $300 getting a snake so I can just free handle it, thats what Boas and Pythons are for.



2. In general, public places where I teach people would not even let me take one in their building. Can you imagine what would happen if a venomous snake of mine got lost in a public building? I'd rather not have a loose venomous snake in a public place, because the vast majority of the population would mistreat it or get bitten.



3. I don't support hack job venomoids... and I never will. There is no excuse for taking an animal into your garage, not using anethesia, and using dirty tools to rip its mouth apart. However, I do not think that it is completely "wrong" to get one animal, that has had PROPER tools and anethesia just to have a living example of a native snake. Most of the talks I do are on native snakes, getting a venomoid Gaboon Viper doesn't make any sense just to show someone to me.



The real reason would be a liability issue of the people I was showing the snake to... its not a hobby of mine to get snakes that are venomous to say "Ohhh look, here's a snake that was venomous". That makes no sense to me... if you get a venomous snake to have a venomous snake for personal use, let it be venomous, but if your going to show people and educate them to keep them from killing off an entire species, its better to have one that can't kill someone to show them, and have the people I teach sue me out of house and home if they get bitten.



If you take the time to read you may understand that it's not something that I particularly support, just something that I'd like to have to teach people about native venomous snakes. Other than mine, I don't see any other reason for having a exotic venomoid.
-----
Currently have:

1.0 Amelanistic Elaphe guttata

0.1 Antherystic Elaphe guttata

1.0 Elaphe vulpina gloydi

1.0 Morelia Spilota Cheyni

0.1 Leucistic Elaphe obsoleta linheimeri

0.1 Oakatee Elaphe guttata



Saving for:

Agkistrodon Contortix mokasen

Epicrates cenchria cenchria

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Subscribe to this Thread ] [ Hide Replies ]