Apres Snakes

I have been supervising 29 small kids at a snake show at the library where I work.

The children had fun; I didn’t ask the snakes.

The young man who talked to the children was very patient and very knowledgeable about snakes. I don’t know what the children learned, but *I* learned that the only poisonous snake in Vermont is the rattlesnake and all others are non-poisonous. This is very unlike Mississippi where I formerly lived. There one treated all snakes with great respect because so many of them are poisonous.

It was very interesting to see the children who were initially frightened gradually become brave enough to first touch and then hold these snakes. One “macho” little boy tried to frighten a girl by thrusting a fairly large garter snake towards her face. The man who brought the snake immediately took the snake back and told the kid {about 9-ish} that he would have demonstrate that he could be quiet and well behaved for 15 minutes before he could hold another snake because what he had just done was frightening to the snake. Snakes like slow movements.

When I see things like this, I am torn between wanting to be teaching again, and great gratitude that I am not still teaching…