Fear

Fear is a powerful emotion. It can completely change the way we live our lives. It can be absolutely crippling and prevent us from doing the things we want to do, and on the flip side it can be beneficial and prevent us from doing something that might harm ourselves. Fear is something that I struggle with on a daily basis. When I was a child I definitely sought out people I trusted to protect me from my fears. I had a very healthy amount of "stranger danger" which translated into an introverted adult that prefers to text as opposed to have to talk to someone. Some of the fears I had were more extreme than others. For example when I was young I would climb up to the top of a slide and freeze and stare off into space. My parents thought I was having seizures so I got to undergo a night of being kept awake followed by an EEG. Turns out I'm just scared of heights, a fear that still is difficult for me to deal with today. My biggest fear however and truly it was a phobia not just a fear, was my fear of snakes. I'm not sure how this phobia developed as both my parents are huge animal lovers and would have no problem moving snakes off roads or catching them to take a closer look at. I on the other hand, couldn't touch a book with a picture of a snake in it. One time my mom and I were out horseback riding and a pair of huge (or so it seemed to me) male Southern Pacific Rattlesnakes were engaged in combat in the middle of the horse trail. I flat out refused to take another step forward. My mom had to come over pull my terrified self onto her horse with her and pony my pony past the two snakes. The snakes themselves could not have cared less that we were walking past them, as they were far too concerned with pushing the other male to the ground to establish whose territory it was. Looking back now I realize I am lucky to have gotten to witness such are rare display of animal behavior, but at the time I felt like I was the most unlucky person in the world. Fears as strong as my aversion to snakes are incredibly difficult to come to terms with, but I have found the one thing that is stronger than fear for me, is knowledge. The knowledge I began to amass about snakes came from an unlikely place, television. I had come home after school one day and turned on Animal Planet to watch TV while I did my homework. On this particular day a different show than I usually watched was on. It was called The Crocodile Hunter. I was cool with him showing off funnel web spiders, kangaroos, emus and crocodiles, but then he was off running through the brush and pulls out a huge King Brown snake. I about had a heart attack. I thought this guys was absolutely insane. Not only was he handling a huge venomous snake but he was talking to it like it was the most gorgeous woman on the planet. Something about that insanity was entertaining enough to pull me back in the following day though. It was like watching a horrific car crash that I couldn't turn away from in my opinion. So pretty much everyday after that I came home and watched this crazy man talk sweet nothings to some of (at least what I thought) the most dangerous animals on the planet. Here's the even more crazy thing though, is that after months of listening to someone so passionately talk about snakes, it starts to rub off on you, enough that I started checking out books at the library on snakes. The more I learned the more interested I became. I started joining online forums that discussed snake husbandry. By the time I was a senior in high school I got my first snake, a crooked tailed ball python I named Nefertari (Tari for short). I quickly moved from the starter species of ball python to one of my all time favorite snakes Green Tree Pythons. I kept reading everything I could get my hands on about snakes and in my first year of college I had successfully hatched my first Green Tree Python clutch, a notoriously difficult species to breed in captivity. As I entered my second year of college I realized I wanted to do more than just raise something that once terrified me, I wanted to make it my career to study them. I switched my major to Zoology and set off on a path to study rattlesnakes and try to convey my passion for these misunderstood creatures to others as the Steve Irwin had done for me. I graduated and started my masters program studying the strike speed of the Southern Pacific Rattlesnake at different temperatures, while caring for the entire Building 8 vivarium at Cal Poly Pomona, including the "Hot Room" (that's were we housed the venomous snakes). When Steve Irwin died I was devastated. The man I owed my entire career pathway to was gone in an instant, and realistically he was responsible for my style of handling snakes too. You see when you are afraid of something your heart rate tends to increase and all species, but the reptilian ones in particular can sense that. So I learned to talk myself through handling venomous snakes. I would sit and tell them how gorgeous they were while trying to convince them to stay on a snake hook. When you sit and tell something how beautiful they are over and over it does this really amazing thing, it calms you as you start to believe it. Snakes obviously can't hear my long winded talks about how amazing they are but I hear myself saying it and it calms me so they don't feel my fear and therefore don't get as defensive. This isn't to say that I don't have any fear of snakes anymore, because I do, but it's more of a "what can I do to ensure that the snake and myself both stay safe while being handled" type of fear. It's what prevents me from becoming distracted when handling snakes or going into a pasture with a bull or leading a buck or ram from one area to another. That little bit of fear allows me to have a massive amount of respect for all animals whether they can hurt me or not. In short fear can prevent you from living your life to the fullest, but with the help of some knowledge and a willingness to learn, it can help you overcome the fear paralysis and learn to live.