They're protected in my home province.

Many years ago, I was in Cali. I took the rental car to Santa Barbara and was bored, so we took it up into the hills. The road turned to dirt and we kept going. I stopped when I saw a snake crossing the road. It was trying to get up the hill, but not having much luck. I was just looking and curious, but he wanted to scare me off so he raised his head up and started wiggling his tail. Really cute little fella. I didn't poke him with a stick or mess with him, but he was a California King snake, so I think would have been relatively harmless (not that I'd want to get bit by something with a bunch of pointy little teeth).

I'm not scared of snakes, but I have a healthy respect. As long as I'm over here, and they are over there, and we agree to go opposite directions, everything is good.

My uncle loved the outdoors. Being the son of a marine biologist professor at the University of Florida presented many opportunities for him to fool around with all kinds of critters. They had a pet bobcat for awhile, indoor cat, but it got too wild and they placed it back into nature.

He scared the hell out of me one evening while enjoying a movie, put a frozen rattler right in front of me when I was preoccupied with the show. He caught many, just happened to freeze that one, it was all coiled up.

One night he caught an alligator roaming the streets of Gainesville. He transplanted it into the UF swimming pool. Next morning the University calls and tells my grand father to get his son down here asap and remove the gator, they had a swim meet that day.

He got bit on the arse too one drunken night while relocating a gator in the road. He mooned me one Christmas morning, so I even got to see the teeth marks in his arse.

I don't mess around with the wild.