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People always say, “Aren’t you frightened?” And no, I'm not afraid of snakes. Of course not. I love snakes. And we never, ever come to work with the thinking that we're going to have a snake bite. I live just behind the serpentarium, and Mara and I walk across to work in the morning, and I'm never thinking “Today's the day. Uh-oh.” It doesn't feel like that at all. It's very rehearsed. I have over a half million handlings, so it's very practiced. However, as you might imagine, sometimes it doesn't go as planned. So, if I make a mistake, I frighten myself. I am afraid of snake bites. It can be fatal or crippling. So, the mentality of this… We always think I can teach people the mechanics of snake handling. I cannot teach them the psychology of it. If you think, “Oh, I might be bitten doing this”, you are not going to be able to do the work. I never think I'm going to have a snake bite. However, as we said, I've developed an allergy to venom that's common in venom workers. Snake venoms are very allergenic. It's just that most people aren't repeatedly exposed. But because of bites and because I work with dry snake venom, processed snake venom, I'm constantly getting exposure, so I'm acutely allergic to most of our venoms, and I'm also allergic to antivenom now, equine serum, because I've had it so many times. So the allergy has to be managed. I [go into anaphylaxis], I'm unconscious in about five minutes. We have adrenaline and epinephrine, and we have an airway kit, and we have a bunch of things to kind of manage the allergic event until we can get to an ambulance or a firetruck or help. And, of course, the hospital, the local hospital knows us, so they are aware of what we do. They are aware we house antivenom here for all of our snakes, both native and exotic. And the antivenom travels with us to the hospital. So, when we come into the emergency room with a cobra bite, they have nothing to give us. We have the serum to treat ourselves, but it has to be done in a hospital setting. I've been bitten 11 times in the 35 years I've been producing venom, and I haven't had a snake bite in 19 years. The first 16 years were kind of rough, right?
