How I Feel About Snakes as Well as Snake Books

The post no one, especially snakes, asked me to write.

I don’t know why I am so afraid of snakes. I remember the first time I felt afraid of one, maybe around age 6 or 7, when I was outside in the backyard with my dad, and he flipped over an old railroad tie he had been using as a border for the garden, and there was a white snake underneath, curved into the shape of an S. It froze, then slithered into the bushes. I sprinted for our screened-in porch.

I don’t know that I had had any kind of close encounter with a snake before then, and the snake didn’t do anything to me.

As my younger sister got older, she became fascinated with reptiles of all kinds, and I remember her being willing to hold a snake at some kind of wildlife encounter. I was not interested.

When I was about 9 years old, we lived in West Virginia. There was a creek in our backyard, and I don’t remember if I ever saw a snake there, but…