Eep. Well, alright.
When I was very young, back in those days I wandered about in the woods, digging in dirt and such, I was not afraid of snakes. In fact, I recall a specifc summer evening when a green snake decided it would slither its way up onto our deck and right up to our back door, where it sat looking at the door. When we tried to leave, my mom had a bit of a fright so I jumped up to pick him up and move him to an obliging nearby bush. No problem.
This sort of fascination with snakes continued, and on my school's annual trip to the nearby Natural Science Center, I volunteered to help during the reptiles demonstration. Naturally, the Science Center teacher was delighted to have a girl volunteer to hold the young boa constrictor in front of the room while she spoke about boas and snakes in general. I hopped right to the front where she placed the maybe 5'-6' long guy around my shoulders, head near my left arm.
She turned back to the class who half listened, and half pulled each other's hair while pondering the playground next to the center in which we were to spend our lunch hour. While she talked about their eating preferences and natural habitats, said boa worked his way over to my right arm, up to my right shoulder, around the back of my neck, around to my front by way of the left of my neck, which placed this boa constrictor neatly around my chest and most of the way around my neck.
At this point, the class started to pay a bit more attention. I became slightly concerned, but not overly. At least not until it decided it needed to get a better look at me. And flex his muscles just a tad. I began to feel a very faint squeeze-let go-squeeze feeling around my right shoulder as the snake slithered out from my left shoulder and turned an eye to look directly at my face.
The class was now paying rapt attention ... but not to the teacher. At this point, she realized something was wrong; the kids were no longer quite as squirmy. She turned to see Mr. Boa staring me down, and wrapped around my upper body. Her speech broke for just a second, but then she continued as she scooted over and took the upper body of the snake from my left shoulder and proceeded to unwind him from my body ... and put him away into his cage.
Ever since, I get goosebumps just from seeing them on TV. Yeah. It's that bad.
