Reptile & Amphibian Forums

WE ALL ARE ON BORROWED TIME UNLESS WE START PLAYING NICE, the infighting will not help us. Mr Harrison made some pretty generalized, and untrue, statements on the Nat Geo show. Watch the show, its stated in plain english. There were statements that hurt the private community AND THOSE WHO DESERVE TO BE A PART OF IT.
The statement about it being safer to have a gun in a house with children than a venomous snake is plain wrong and misleading. Guns and snakes are two TOTALLY DIFFERENT "animals" and guns have a verifiable track record for killing and maiming ALOT of children every year, I believe snakes play a VERY SMALL role in childhood deaths in this country, so small that I would say inconsequential, prove me wrong. Dig up any stories on childhood mortality by gunshot and compare it to snakebite, and I mean snakebites occurring from animals kept in the same household as small children. I suspect the numbers are quite biased towards guns.
I believe Wes could shed some light on this with his extensive and well kept library.
Now if Mr Harrison's habits are as bad as Ive read here, then bite #16 may not pan out for him and that would be a shame because his misfortune as a "professional" WILL reflect badly on the venomous keeper community as a whole, private or not.
Working with venomous snakes is dangerous, just like climbing, keep doing it and one day you will probably fall. It doesnt mean you are a bad keeper,or a bad climber, its called "odds".
I know personally how this works, as a "professional" that I knew and mentored under from San Francisco was removed from the planet prematurely by a simple mistake that any of us could have made.
I am not dissapointed in Mr Harrison because of jealousy, rather, because he (and his brother) made some very generalized statements on a nationally viewed forum that could possibly affect my rights as a biologist, naturalist, american citizen and dare I say "professional"?
Peace
Brett

I want it to be noted there were 2 Mr. Harrisons on the show you are talking about and Jim's brother, an officer, made that statement. Jim has also commented on that statement before in these forums. He probably would explain it again if this forum was not filled with people throwing flames at him.

A lot of the stuff in there was taken out of context and I think we all know journalism does this.

I am just glad some of the half whit remarks said in here never make it one television as a voice for snakes.