Dear LPG,

As one of the editors of this website, I tend to write other people’s stories for LPG, but I have found a personal subject that I would like to write about today. 

Whilst browsing online the other day I found out that, if we can print my message on the right day, today is National Snake Day. 

I suspect that unless you have been to somewhere really close to the equator or some other really tropical place, the vast majority of people will only have seen the odd really small one in the English grass, on television during some documentary or film, or from the other side of a vivarium cage at the zoo or in your local pet shop.  My best school friend had one when we were both young mothers and, as long as it was behind glass when I visited, I enjoyed taking the odd look from a safe distance, but my daughter had eczema and that meant that among many other things, she was allergic to pets with feathers and fir, but not scales. 

She was the one, who after a visit, decided she wanted a pet snake for Christmas.  I had a healthy respect for snakes and did not want one in my home, so I took the children to the pet shop expecting that the snakes would all have hibernated for the winter.  I thought I could persuade her that we could just have a look in the hope that she would have forgotten by the summer, but that was when I found out that they can learn to sleep at night.

We left the shop with a Common California Kingsnake and the first question I asked the pet shop owner was just how big it would get.  He did tell me that it would not get fat.  The day we brought it home it was more like a wiggly worm and Joffee, as my children named it, truly bothered me as my daughter had it crawling up inside the sleeve of her jumper while I watched in horror.  But it did not take long before I got used to having the snake around.  In the summer, I would take it when picking them up from infant’s school and it became quite a curiosity with the young children.  As it got bigger we would take it to Blackheath wrapped around one of our necks or in its carrying sack and in the pre-21^st century days of power cuts my mum provided a home for Joffee when it was too cold in ours. 

When my children finally left home, the snake stayed with me.  It came in handy if one of those door to door salesman managed to get past the front door.   All I had to do is mention that Joffee needed to come out for some air and they would be off.

I only had to provide one meal a week and some litter, and on the few occasions it would not eat I would contact London Zoo for an answer.  It was supposed to live for ten to fifteen years but lived to the ripe old age of 16. They feel cold but they really are not slimy, and it measured about seven and a half feet at its longest, a measurement we took from its shed skin because it never stayed still long enough for us to measure the snake itself.   The one thing that I never learnt was if it was she or a he, apparently an internal investigation would have been needed and I did not want it to be put through all that.

I think that many people think badly of them because they are linked with all things that are bad in the Bible.  We hardly get into Genesis before Eve is tempted by one and the result of her meddling is all that is wrong with our world today, but while I have the greatest respect for all the world’s snakes, I have spent many an evening watching Coronation Street while Joffee crawled around me and the chair I sat in and I have to say that I think that the experience was every bit as beneficial as spending time petting a cat or dog. 

So, while I continue to have an extremely healthy respect for all reptiles that get from A to B on their stomachs, I would like to ask readers to celebrate their snakes today if they have one or at least acknowledge that they are not all bad.   

Maureen B.

Maureen offers a little information…

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