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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;SBSVC, post: 189134, member: 136&quot;]Oh, heck... All that talk about SPIDERS made me think of MY biggest fear:&nbsp; REPTILES! Oh, how I HATE them! (Spiders &amp; bugs don&#039;t have the same effect on me...)</p><p><br /></p><p>I may have posted about this before. If it sounds familiar, please just skip ahead!</p><p><br /></p><p>Snakes, in particular, make me physically sick. Once upon a time, I was actually okay with them - as long as they stayed away from me. Over the course of several years, however, they made my &quot;no way&quot; list!</p><p><br /></p><p>First, when I was a kid, I was running down a hill in our yard with my &quot;next younger&quot; sister, Kitty. She screamed, and just as I looked over at her, a live toad hopped out of the mouth of the snake she had stepped on. Eww, eww, eww! The incident did her in (on snakes) for life, but I still had a ways to go...</p><p><br /></p><p>Next, I was a teenager, working as a camp counselor at the ritzy day camp I&#039;d gone to as a child. My &quot;group&quot; was a bunch of young boys, and we were building a fort up in the woods. I had brought along some &quot;yard tools&quot; and was hacking out a clearing. The boys were collecting what I&#039;d cut and moving it aside.</p><p><br /></p><p>A little boy named Jeffrey called out, &quot;C*****, what&#039;s this?&quot; He was holding up a 9 or 10 inch piece of <i>something.</i>..</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Oh, wow, Jeffrey,&quot; I replied. &quot;That&#039;s half a snake!&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;What happened to the other half?&quot; he asked.</p><p><br /></p><p>OMG. I could have screamed, fainted, or maybe even run off and left a couple dozen little guys just standing there in the forest.</p><p><br /></p><p>Instead, I very calmly gave a spirited talk about the regeneration of reptile parts. (Heaven knows how I did it!)</p><p><br /></p><p>I also then dissuaded dear little Jeffrey from taking the half-snake home to his Mom. (Can you <i>imagine</i> his poor mother emptying out his backpack that evening? Wet bathing suit? Check. Wet towel? Check. Half a snake? OMG again...)</p><p><br /></p><p>In short, we had a little burial ceremony at our future fort-site for the poor snake&#039;s nether half...</p><p><br /></p><p>I actually <i>shook</i> in the car going home that evening.</p><p><br /></p><p>Last, but not least, was my HABU encounter c.1980. DH was on an assignment in Japan and happened to be in Okinawa for part of it. I had arranged to visit for a week during the Okinawa segment.</p><p><br /></p><p>I think that the first thing I heard when I landed on Okinawa was, &quot;Beware of the habu!&quot; If I recall correctly, the habu is a type of viper... (I&#039;d look it up, but any source would probably include a photo of one, and I don&#039;t want to see it!)</p><p><br /></p><p>There were signs all over the place, all showing a number to call if you happened to be bitten by one. Eww, ewww, and ewww again!</p><p><br /></p><p>So, DH had some time off, and we went to an island &quot;resort&quot; - rough, to be sure - not really a resort, by MY estimation...</p><p><br /></p><p>The very first time we tried walking from our little &quot;resort cottage&quot; to &quot;the beach&quot;, a HUGE habu slithered across the path in front of us. (As I remember, it was 6&#039; long, which probably means it was 3&#039;...)</p><p><br /></p><p>That habu was the final straw. To this day, I cannot abide the thought - let alone the sight - of a SNAKE!</p><p><br /></p><p>(Just for the record, on that same trip to Okinawa, I also took a shower with a gecko... Freaked me out, but it wasn&#039;t anywhere NEAR as bad as the habu!)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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