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Taking my snakes to a street festival
#1
This weekend is my big local street festival. The reptile centre always has a display and I bring my own snakes and we do two days of educating the public about reptiles.
It is a big festival and it will be fun. Last year my snakes really loved it.

http://bigonbloorfestival.com/

We just spent hours cleaning up the reptile centre and making sure all the tanks look their best. Just like kids they will find a way to mess things up before morning.
I have my travel boxes ready, but I will wait until last minute to decide who goes with me. Some of them are shedding and I won't take then out like that. Anyone who seems reluctant to go with me can stay home. I think I will have lots of volunteers. The snakes really had fun last year.

This is a picture of me with Mike last year.
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Catherine

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#2
Mike must really want to go. She shed during the night. In fact most of the snakes going with me just shed so they all look their best. How well trained are those snakes, they even shed in time to look their best for the festival.Smiley4
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Catherine

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#3
Haha! They know what is happening and want to look cool!

What a lovely picture of you and Mike!

I hope you all have a fabulous day Smile
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#4
The weather was perfect and it will be perfect tomorrow.

This is a big event. They think there will be 80,000 people over the two days. I can take that number in it is so big, but we did see an unending swarm of people.

I took: David, a soft coffee colour
Desert Sand, a caramel and cream and milk chocolate colour
Mike, a wild coloured female, my little sweetheart
Iceman, White and pink and cream coloured
Molly, a young female with the wild colour very intensified

All of them are corn snakes and they loved being out with me. I brought out one at a time and showed him/her to people and even let them hold the snake and take pictures. I spent the whole time talking about snakes and corn snakes and how they are as pets, how important snakes are to world ecology, how much I love my own snakes and I answered a continuous stream of questions.
When the first snake needed a break I put him back and brought out the next one. With five snakes they had lots of breaks so it was an easy day for them.
I never got a break, people were still asking questions at 9pm when the festival shut down for the night.
We went back inside the reptile centre and the public followed us in and we had people there until midnight.
I will be back there tomorrow at noon to start again, but this time we only go until 6pm.

So many people had never been close to a snake or touched one. They all are surprized at how soft their skin is and how warm and smooth. People were amazed at the colours. They are my snakes and I am always amazed at their colours. How is it possible that I have a snake so beautiful!

That is just what I did. They also had other snakes and various lizards out on display. We educated thousands of people about reptiles.
I may be tired, but I am really glad we do this.
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Catherine

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#5
That sounds like a wonderful day. It is really important to raise awareness in that good, hands-on way, about species many people don't encounter generally -or if they do, they have some fear.

I hope today was just as good!
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#6
It was a beautiful day and just as busy. Thousands of people came by to see the snakes. Some came back again from Saturday.
David, my biggest corn snake stole the show(the corn snake part). All the snakes were popular, but everybody loved David.

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This is David. The darker snake is Raven his mate. I didn't bring her because she isn't as strong. David is a strong outgoing snake and he likes public events.

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This is Desert Sand(Sandi) and people loved his colour.

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The pink one is Iceman. We went for a walk down the length of the festival and people kept stopping me to talk about him. They all wanted to touch him and be photographed with him. He enjoyed his day very much.

It was fun and exciting, but it was also a wonderful time to talk about animals and encourage people to treat them right. I was able to talk about ecology and conservation at the same time as I was showing people my pretty snakes. Some of them listened.
I encouraged people to treat our wild snakes with respect and leave them in peace.
It was worth the long hours and tired feet(and a bit of sun burn) to reach so many people. I spoke to a lot of young children and I encouraged them to be kind to animals.
I am going to sleep well tonight, but it was worth every minute.
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Catherine

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