Snakes

In the miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man, there's a scene where Nick Nolte put a snake in his son's crib, so he wouldn't be afraid of snakes when he was older. (The boy's mother had a fit.) I can imagine Steve Irwin doing that with his kids.

Sometimes I wish someone had put a snake in my crib.  It isn't that I'm particularly afraid of snakes.  It's that my parents had a tendency to keep me away from anything scary.  In hindsight, I with they'd encouraged me to deal with my fears more.  Oh well, you can choose your friends but you can't choose your parents.

In India some villages keep a pet cobra!  He may bite people occasionally, but mostly he just eats rats and keeps that population down.  I read that when a snake charmer draws out the snake, it isn't the music but the way he wiggles his instrument!

Some years back I saw the movie The Snake Pit, with Olivia De Havilland as an inmate in a mental institution.  Movies about mental illness inevitably simplify things for dramatic purpose.  What I remember was a shrink saying that one sign that Olivia was being cured was that she was becoming possessive with her property.

In the movie You Can't Cheat an Honest Man there's a scene where W.C. Fields attended a high-class soiree and kept talking about snakes ("That reminds me of an experience I had with a rattlesnake..."), causing the delicate hostess to scream and faint!