TULSA WORLD (Oklahoma) 19 August 07 Snakes on the plains: BA expo brings reptiles to state (David Harper)
Fans of creepy, crawly things gathered Saturday.
A lot of the people who attended Saturday's Oklahoma Reptile Expo in Broken Arrow didn't set out to be so passionate about the cold-blooded creatures.
It just sort of snaked up on them.
Sarah McVicar of Oklahoma City bought her husband, Chris, a ball python as a birthday present in 2003.
Fast forward four years and the McVicars have close to 200 snakes in their collection.
"They're addicting," Sarah McVicar said. "It's like tattoos. If you get one, you want to get more. You see a prettier one and you want to get that one, too."
When considering additions to his collection, Chris McVicar said he tries to stick to one guideline.
"If it could kill me, I don't want it," he said.
Justin Mitchell, 29, of Fayetteville, Ark., said he "used to have a snake that could have eaten that kid over there," gesturing towards a small child standing nearby.
When he became a father, he decided it was time to get rid of the 14-foot-long, 100-pound Burmese python, just to be on the safe side.
Mitchell, like the McVicars one of Saturday's exhibitors, said he has been a snake enthusiast since he was a teenager.
"Everyone else was afraid of them and creeped out by them, so naturally I was drawn to them," Mitchell said.
It should be noted that Saturday's event was limited to nonvenomous reptiles. Still, it was somewhat jarring to see people nonchalantly handling snakes -- some of them quite large -- as if they were so many garden hoses.
Of course, snakes and other reptiles have had a public relations problem dating back to the Garden of Eden. A check of a thesaurus (a word that itself is evocative of perhaps an ancestor of modern-day reptiles) suggests words like crawling, creeping, groveling, low, mean, treacherous, vile and vulgar as alternatives to the word "reptilian."
Jennifer Stafford of Salina said she used to think "the only good snake is a dead one." However, she said she began to change her view once trained as a veterinary technician.
She explained this while holding a Dumeril's boa as if it posed no more of a threat than a giant, overcooked noodle.
A later Internet check showed that the Dumerils boa constrictor is "usually quite a nervous snake. Most will usually tame down with regular handling."
That's reassuring.
Mitchell said the sort of domestic snakes on display Saturday really pose no threat to people because they don't see humans as either food or threats to their safety.
Could be a different story with a snake you might encounter by the side of the road, he acknowledged.
Edith Sample said snakes make great pets.
Snakes have cats and dogs beat on several fronts, she said. They don't need to be fed very often, don't make noise, or soil the carpets. She said they don't shed either, although she apparently was talking about fur and not their skins.
She drove in from Joplin, Mo., to attend the event. That meant altering her usual Saturday routine of thawing out the frozen mice in her freezer (relax, they were already dead before they went in there) to feed to the 15 snakes she has at home.
She said she keeps the mice next to the chicken in her freezer. She seemed quite serious about that.
Sample said her interest in snakes stems back a few years to when she moved into a townhouse where more traditional pets were forbidden.
She said she was told a snake was an acceptable option. Now she has 16 -- she bought another one Saturday.
The event was not limited to snakes, though. It also featured creatures such as lizards, turtles and tortoises.
Organizers Jason and Kelli Cruse of Kansas City, Kan., said the next Oklahoma Reptile Expo will be held on Oct. 20.
BA expo brings reptiles to state