Used to work at a nature center, which was attached to an elementary school. Occasionally the fire alarms would go off, and for the most part, we’d all just go about our business (weekly fire drills for the kids didn’t mean that the snakes tanks didn’t need cleaning).
In the middle of one of these alarms, I had a lovely 7’ long red rat snake wrapped around me while I was cleaning up. (She was my favorite - active, but polite, never bit or struck or pulled back to threaten it, or musked me, no matter what I did with her). Of course, law of averages, there had to be one that was a “real” alarm. Bunch of big firefighters come in, demanded to know why we weren’t outside with everyone else, the work’s.
And then they started screaming.
High pitched, girly shrieks. As first one, then another, noticed I was wearing a snake.
And, of course, the screaming brought more fire fighters over, who also screamed… let’s just say I had three trucks worth of dudes gathered around me, stunned that I would -wear- a snake. Who, of course, saw new people and was doing her best to make friends.
Once the false alarm was sorted, they all came back, to a man, to meet the snakes. I had enough for each of them to “try one on.”
These big, buff dudes, who risk their lives running into raging fires without a thought, had to hype themselves up for me to put a young hog nose in their palms. Anxiety sweat dropped down their faces and soaked through their undershirts as I let the red and grey rat snakes cool around their arms. When the garden snake slipped down one guy’s collar, I thought he was going to drop dead from a heart attack, right there. But they all did it! And survived!
I just wish I’d taken pictures to show the third graders when they came in after classes finished!
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