NOM

I'm not sure whether or not this provides any kind of explanation or clarification with regard to my many, varied, and flagrantly obvious problems, but before I was born my parents spent a few years breeding pythons.

I'm one of the few people I know who isn't afraid of snakes. Not just not afraid of snakes but I genuinely like them. They're freaking cool. They can't fetch a ball or play with a bit of string and they're not really built for cuddling, but they're fascinating to watch. Plus there's no poop to clean up. My dad got his first pet snake as a teenager in the 70s. It was a reticulated python. He named her Monty. Oh yes, he went there.

So because my parents were so comfortable around snakes, I've always been comfortable around snakes. In my parent's neighbourhood I became known as that girl who will remove snakes. Except for the occasional copperhead--which is rare and distinctive--there are no venomous snakes in that area so there wasn't any danger in me picking them up and carrying them half a mile to release them into the woods.

Before we got our dog, we actually had a pet snake for quite a few years. It didn't have a name but it was a common black rat snake, which I think are related to the common garter snake and don't grow very big. He found it hanging from a light fixture in his office and everybody was freaking out even though it was just a baby snake--barely thirteen inches long and skinny as a pencil. He took it home and we kept it as a pet for four years.

I don't know what this says about me either, but my favourite thing with this snake was watching it eat. Most people give their snakes frozen mice or something that's already dead (partly because watching a snake strangle live prey is probably pretty disturbing to most people, and partly because live prey can fight back and potentially harm or even kill the snake), but my dad always bought it live baby mice. He got them from pet stores. They're called 'pinkies' and are newborn mice still hairless with their eyes closed. It was like watching Animal Planet in real life, watching the snake eat. When it got older it graduated to baby mice with eyes and hair but even at its biggest the snake was maybe four foot long and as big as a garden hose at its fattest point.

People think I'm weird because of this. They're probably right.