I recently returned from a pet expo where I was volenteering with my herp sociaty. I had out Mephisto, my albino burm, and a lady looking at him seemed very suprised as to how calm he was with all the people around touching him. She asked if I was afraid if he was going to bite (the animals heads are never near the people looking at them), and I told her that snakes will only bite if they have a very good reason too, and that he was very used to being pet and touched like this. She then told me a story of when she was at the Shrine circus where they had a good sized burm they were letting people hold, only they had its mouth closed shut with a plastic tie thing. She felt bad for the snake, but didnt know that that shouldnt of been done at all. I feel that theres a good amount of people out who are into reptiles but dont know the importance of education the public about them. A lot of the public will mainly only come into contact with snakes and other reptiles in places such as circuses, places where they rely more on the entertainment factor then education, usually teaching the public that reptiles are something to fear, or that their just here for our amusment and the populer 'kool' factor of owning them. This hobby of ours is suffering because of this, so everyone is involved. All it takes is for one person to reinform a misinformed person, who will then most likely spread it to others misinformed. I'm sure most of you know well about this already, but it never hurts reminding ourselves.
(I'm sorry I havent posted much here, its just that there are a lot of very good people on this forum who reply to the posts before I do, and all I would be doing is repeating them, which probably wouldnt hurt, seeing as how some people need to be told things more then once.)
