Venomoid Question

[Joel La Rocque]

I would really love to get off the who has more bites saga! I don't care if you are the only reptile handler at five Zoos, A Zoo handler may actually pick up five snakes a day, at best, if he or she is doing their job right. I was handling over 125 snakes a day seven days a week, do the math. Bill Hasst is another idiot like myself but he has over 170 bites in his career, Hershel Flowers and Tim Freide are two more people with an affliction. You can stand outside a glass cage full of taipans for 50 years and not receive one bite. What the Hell does that prove, it is MATH. If you handle that many animals a day there are going to be accidents and that's that. In the first part of this post I said I was an idiot, there you have it from the horses mouth, case closed spread the news. As for snakes thinking, they have not been studied scientifically enough to prove anything. Any one can compile up enough data to support his or her beliefs. I know my animals and neither you or anyone else will change what I have witnessed and come to believe. Ask your self, "Why can I go into a room with 30 venomous, fully functional fangs in place snakes and reach in and carry them around like a Garter snake?" I sure as hell do not have any special gifts! Maybe its my aftershave? Who knows but I do it all the time and have the pictures on hand. One person did not believe it and pestered me so much I let him order me with three snakes in any pose he wanted (Reasonable) with that days newspaper. That was the only thing that shut him up. I am not ranting, but it does get old answering the same questions over and over, I get no less then 75 emails a day from people want to know something and I answer every one of them. It is to the point of sending a form letter. I am a sixty year old normal guy that has worked with snakes for a little over forty years now and that is all I am. I might add that I have enough respect for you and the others who ask to drop a subject that I do not subscribe to, I don't hastle you, why do it to me? If you believe I am nuts, well maybe I am but lets not spread it around.

Thanks Joel