Regular readers know well how I feel about....Hang on, do I actually have any regular readers?? It is remiss of me to be so very presumptuous.
Anyone willing to trawl through my 45 blogs will quickly conclude the following:
1) I like snakes
2) I do what I can to imbue respect for, and the conservation of venomous snakes
3) I get frustrated with the general public's indifference (or in most cases, malevolence) toward snakes.
It has worn me down; eroded my fortitude. It has fractured my solidarity with the serpent. My passion and my affinity with reptiles is still, as always, ever present, but my desire to imbue upon others my knowledge and ardor has long since left me.
Despite how I feel, it is unacceptable to give up; to quit. So I have set about a solution. I am going to train someone else to be the person I no longer have the energy to be. I am the master and now I have my apprentice.
I am quite certain that if I had have advertised on SEEK I would have been inundated with nutbags and fruitloops, heros and hooligans. I did not want to go there. So it was quite by chance that I met my prospective apprentice at a very low-key and casual herpetological sun-downer. Sun-downer is Australian for 'excuse to drink before the end of the work day'.
Amy Wild is a young and terribly enthusiastic herpetologist who has been handling venomous snakes for about one year: approximately 1/25 the amount of time I have been handling. She does not lack confidence, as is evident in the video.
As Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker "with great power comes great responsibility,". It wont be long before Amy has some of the worlds most venomous snakes laying at the foot of trainee venomous snake relocators on dozens of mine sites and work places around Western Australia. There is a certain intensity about being the only thing that separates the Trainee from the bite of a highly venomous snake. Can you teach someone to cope with that intensity? I doubt it.
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