{"id":58,"date":"2005-08-22T16:54:05","date_gmt":"2005-08-23T00:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hamsterrepublic.com\/james\/?p=58"},"modified":"2007-10-09T21:50:08","modified_gmt":"2007-10-10T05:50:08","slug":"snakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/james.hamsterrepublic.com\/?p=58","title":{"rendered":"Snakes!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Current mood: Slithery \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/em><\/p>\n

I used to be mortally afraid of snakes. When I was 7 years old, I lived in an area where rattlesnakes were common, and I would lay awake at night in fear thinking about them. I had recurring nightmares about snakes coming out of the ground. Just looking at them gave me shivers– even on TV, when the actual physical snake was nowhere near me.<\/p>\n

I few years ago, I took the first step on my road to recovery from snake-o-phobia, by watching numerous episodes of Crocodile Hunter<\/a>. Steve Erwin’s casual attitude toward snakes was fascinating, and although at first I had to sit very far away from the TV, I gradually got over my fear of looking at snakes, and began to recognize them as beautiful.<\/p>\n

The first time I ever held a snake was a few months ago, on State Street in Santa Barbara<\/a> where people from the Santa Barbara Snake Rescue<\/a> organization were showing snakes. I was a little nervous, but the snakes were just so fascinating, I couldn’t help but enjoy them.
\n

<\/a><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

This weekend I went to the same place, and they were there again. I spend even longer playing with the snakes than I did last time. Holding a garter snake<\/a> and an albino corn snake<\/a> at the same time, I felt the last tiny shred of fear melt away, and I decided that I love snakes. Snakes are cuddly. When you hold them, they can’t even move without hugging you.<\/p>\n

If you are afraid of snakes, and run the other way at the sight of them, you don’t know what you are missing. If you live in the area, go spend a Sunday afternoon in Santa Barbara, and see and feel for yourself. If you live elsewhere, ask a reptile-savvy friend to help you, or if you don’t know anyone, go to a pet store and pretend to shop.<\/p>\n

I wonder why I was afraid of snakes in the first place? Sure there was the poison thing, But even when I knew for certain that a specific snake was harmless, I was still afraid of it, against all rationality. Why? I am guessing that maybe a deeper reason for fearing all<\/em> snakes was because they seemed magical. Lacking limbs, the just seem to propel themselves along by sheer force of will, which is unnerving. Only when you actually hold a snake, and feel its muscles push gently against your skin, do you start to understand how it moves, and once you understand it, it ceases to be a part of the unknown, and therefore ceases to be frightening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Current mood: Slithery I used to be mortally afraid of snakes. When I was 7 years old, I lived in an area where rattlesnakes were common, and I would lay awake at night in fear thinking about them. I had recurring nightmares about snakes coming out of the ground. Just looking at them gave me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rambling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/james.hamsterrepublic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/james.hamsterrepublic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/james.hamsterrepublic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/james.hamsterrepublic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/james.hamsterrepublic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/james.hamsterrepublic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/james.hamsterrepublic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/james.hamsterrepublic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/james.hamsterrepublic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}