A Snake Bit Me!!!

I never thought I’d be playing with snakes, cockroaches, lizards, toads, or baby alligators.  I admit, I’ve had a fascination for animals since I can remember, but it was always a sort of  “long distance relationship.”  Often times, I would read about them, watch the discovery channel, you know play with some housed pets, and every once in a while carefully run away from them so they can have their space.

But, thanks to my temporary home in the wilderness, we are able to bond a lot more intimately and my love for them has sincerely evolved.   All of God’s creatures have a personality and, amazingly enough, the majority of the animals, I find, are just like us.

For the first time today I was bitten by a snake.  As horrible as the thought of that sounds, it was actually shockingly exciting.  First of all, I was already equipped mentally to be in its vicinity.  I am feeling pretty confident because I study some key characteristics about their personalities and make-ups and, therefore, I understand enough to feel like it’s safe to handle them. If I can identify the species of snake, then I can choose one of two options (a) I should walk away slowly if it’s venomous or (b) there’s nothing to fear, most snakes are not venomous and are actually safe and fascinating creatures.

So, yeah, I was bit by a snake, a harmless brown water snake to be exact.   As we were introducing ourselves to all the animals in the reptile/amphibian lab,   was encouraged to get familiar with all of them personally because in about 2 weeks, I’ll be teaching a group of students about all of them.  So, I went for it.  I played with a corn snake, a king snake, and the funny thing is as soon as I picked up the littlest snake of all… that’s when it happened.  It has a sort of Napoleon complex I guess.

As harmless as this little guy is, I can’t imagine this happening to me when I was walking in fear.  I know I would’ve never been able to add this to my list of “special” experiences because I would’ve been too scared to even try.  The beauty in the whole “snake bite” is the fact that I can say that I, Prisci Polet, survived one of my worst past fears, and it wasn’t nearly as close as the Anaconda movie made me think it would be…lol.

What’s the point in living in the wild if I can’t be wild?  The only reason I “survived” this incident, is because I’d already made up in my mind that it couldn’t really hurt me.  I didn’t panic. Instead I showed my small snake bit to the rest of the class as if it was the coolest thing to ever happen to me.

So what, maybe I came on too strong for our first date…lol.  But I guarantee you this, I’ll never forget him and based off of the little blood that he created from his tiny mouth, he will never forget me either.  Look at that. One of my worst fears and I are bonded forever, and I’ll never look at snakes, or any of my other nightmares the same.

(Feel free to read about my Day1-6 if you haven't already.. I'm in "The Wilderness" and I'll be typing up entries often)