Good news, you can blink faster than a snake can bite!

I've always liked animals and I've never really been the silly girly girl type who freaked out about worms or bugs or other such, non-furry animals. I mean, I do prefer the cute, fuzzy ones but these are certainly not the only viable cuteness factors. Look at this turtle, not fuzzy at all but way up there on the cute scale regardless. Just look at the joy in his little reptilian eyes (not amphibian eyes, I checked)!

I wish I could be that content with only a soggy strawberry to my name!

But enough about turtles. This story is not about turtles, it's about snakes. Snakes are, admittedly, not very high on the cute scale (even one restricted to reptiles, there's a lot of adorable lizards out there) but that didn't stop the eleven-year-old me from wanting to hold them. I blame this phenomenon on Steve Irwin.

Oh yeah, this looks like a good example to be setting for impressionable, young children.

As an avid fan of the Crocodile Hunter and his 30 minute show on Animal Planet I began to fancy myself quite the reptile expert. They are animals too and they need to be loved just as much as their cuter, fuzzier counterparts! And that is undoubtedly what I was thinking when I decided to spend that fateful lunch period in 6th grade "playing" with the class pets. Yes... yes, they were snakes.

Perhaps now is the time for some background information; it was your typical 6th grade class room in your typical charter school only the teacher let us sit on the floor instead of in desks and we had two red tailed boas as class pets instead of hamsters. The snakes, Fred and Ethel as I had so nerdily dubbed them, lived together in a fish tank lined with newspaper that was a morally questionable home for two, three-foot-long snakes. Over the course of the year, our innocent 6th grade eyes were assailed by our class pets being mauled in the face by the mice they were supposed to be eating and then later regurgitating the same mice onto the floor. That is wholesome learning right there.

You may wonder why, given the information that you have so far about our dear Fred and Ethel, I ever felt the need to get any closer to them than peering in from the other side of the glass of their tank. Looking back at it, I can honestly say, I wonder too. But I did. So great, in fact, was my desire to show these little serpentine beasts that they were loved - and in so doing show all my classmates that I was a cool kid who wasn't afraid of no serpents - that I figured some one on one man handling was just what the doctor ordered. No, the cruel irony is not lost on me now.   

So all of this is what lead up to me putting my crocodile hunter skills to the test and fishing one of the snakes out (I don't even remember if it was Fred or Ethel) and "playing" with him/her one day instead of just going outside for lunch and recess like a normal kid. I did, in fact, have permission to do this. The teacher was in the room with me the whole time, granted, he wasn't paying much attention. After all, I had assured him multiple times that I was basically a professional and he could trust me. He should not have trusted me. So there I was displaying my snake know how to another kid who had chosen to dine in the classroom that day. Sadly, my "snake know how" consisted entirely of holding it with your thumb right behind it's head so it couldn't bite you. And really, this is still a very good thing to know, it is completely true. If you take anything away from this let it be this crucial information... or amused pity at my stupidity, that's good too.

In an effort to really accentuate how cool it was that I was holding a snake to the only other kid in the room I tried to get him to hold it too. He, being a rational thinking person, decided that no, he didn't really have any desire to hold a snake. How wise he was. I remember asking him in what I can only assume was an impressively incredulous tone, "What, you think it's gonna bite you or something?!" How stupid I was.

It must have been roughly 2 minutes after that when I decided that I had exhausted all my opportunities for impressing people with my fearlessness and should put the snake away. Here is a tip for you all; when you need to move the mesh topper that is keeping one snake inside the tank in order to put the one your holding in, do so with the hand that is not holding onto said snake's head. This is not what I did, and let me tell you, a snake with a free head only needs one chance to bite you in the face. 

Did you know that a snake bite to the eyelid will result in a shiner that looks just like some one punched you in the face? Well it does! It was right around the time I discovered this for myself in the girls bathroom that all of the other kids came in from their much less exciting, albeit safer lunch period on the playground. Perfect timing. From there on, the rest of my school day was a blur of explaining the story at least 50 billion times, allowing the secretary to play nurse while she gave me an eye test that she clearly made up, and breaking the news to my mom. That was fun. I remember very clearly my teacher calling her up and saying these words, "Well, our class pet... you know... the snakes... seem to have mistaken your daughter for a small rodent." My poor mom.

But here is the bright side, if there is a bright side of getting bitten in the face by a snake: a) it wasn't a poisonous snake, so that's good! b) you get to tell your epic battle story to basically everyone you see (however that is only fun the first 50 times) and c) when you have to go to the dentist later that day to get a tooth pulled, every single dentist and hygienist in the place will certainly have heard about the girl with the snake bite and walk through the room to see for themselves as you're getting hunks of bone ripped out of your jaw. I know it doesn't sound like that's the bright side but they all bring presents and popsicles!

And that is the story of the last time I enjoyed a trip to the dentist.