That particular presentation was done indooors, in a middle school gym. I never had that African rock outside. He was unpredictable -- some days he was very good, others he was quite bad. When I decided to show him, he had been a good streak for quite a while. I thought that maybe I had tamed him down. Not so -- he went nuts that day around those kids. In retrospect, none of the kids were ever in any danger -- the snake tried to flee to the rear of the gym. Most of what took place happened with my back turned to the audience. Looking back, it was pretty funny. But in close quarters, like a classroom, it could have been very bad.



I never showed that snake again, and wound up selling it to a nearby zoo. After the zoo paid me and I placed the snake in his new cage (a big walk in enclosure), I walked around to the front of the cage to take one last look at the snake. He turned his head and saw me just as a group of children came through the reptile house and charged the glass as hard as he could. He struck at me through the glass, banged his mouth up and just stared at me through the cage. I grabbed the container I brought him in and headed out of the reptile house as quickly as I could! I was afraid the curator might send the snake back with me!



That was one ornery snake. I've sort of had the itch to get a baby retic to add to my collection, and if we get to talking about rocks here, I'll probably start wanting another one of them. My wife wouldn't like that very much.



And for the record, I would like to see burms, retics, rocks, and anacondas on the same forum. Traffic on the retic and anaconda forum can be slow. It would be nice to have all the big snakes on one location.



RP

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