I fell down a rabbithole of videos about snake attacks
For some reason, I spent most of my ambient chore time in the last week watching videos about people getting attacked by their pet snakes (and occasionally alligators). I'd stand around folding laundry and happily listening to interviews with YouTubers where they talked about getting bit.
I watched a lot of them... and honestly they weren't even very good. Many of the presenters were also doing the Youtube Yelling Man voice, which was an additional layer of weirdness. Sometimes it's enjoyable to go down a rabbithole of interesting but mediocre material, though! Sometimes I just want to immerse myself in a vat of weird shitty stuff!
I found the snake attack videos particularly pleasant as a form of interesting background noise because I'm not afraid of snakes or reptiles, and actually quite miss handling them. When I was in middle school, I often had to help take care of a snake and a leopard gecko who were housed in the 7th grade homeroom block.
I can't remember if this was something I was actually assigned to do, or something I volunteered to do? I was much more involved with the gecko, because it seemed to need a lot more active care... I would help feed it, or walk around with it to socialize it. I'd often hold the snake, too.
In grade school, years before, I'd also been the kind of kid who would grab snakes off the ground. I strongly remember finding a lost baby rat snake or milk snake in a classroom at a school where I was attending a summer camp. It bit me, cutely, on the base of the thumb. Snakes have extremely weak bites - because they can unhinge their jaws, they don't really have the leverage or musculature to apply much force. Baby milk snakes can hold on hard enough to support their body, but not hard enough to affect a person in any way. The bite was less forceful than even clipping a clothespin on my hand. After that, I got really into grabbing garter snakes (until one of them did the stinky pee thing on my friend).
And finally... one of my EARLIEST memories is actually of a snake-related moment I experienced in preschool. One of the junior kindergarten teachers, Mr. Arnold, found a large rat snake on the playground. He picked it up and pretended that it was attacking him. He was wearing an insane late 80s/early 90s windbreaker. Permanently stuck in my skull, I have a visual of him posing in that neon jacket, with a two-or-three-foot-long snake held above his head, screaming "Aaahh!!! Ahhh!!!!"
Reptiles!! They are cool!!!
I have never attempted to own a pet reptile... mostly because I hate bugs more than I love reptiles. I would not want to have to feed a lizard crickets, and feeding snakes frozen mice seems like a hassle. I am enjoying my freewheeling, never-tied-down adult life where I get to go on vacations without planning whether any of my pets needs to eat a dead animal. I do like snakes a lot, like, as a concept, though. They are pretty cute! They are soft and nice! They look pretty!
If you are curious: the most interesting reptile attack video I saw last week was this one, where a zoologist interviews a woman whose hand was almost torn off by an alligator. Not a snake, but still. Also, it was so much less sensationalistic and YouTube-yelly-man than the rest of the videos I saw. It is really the only one I feel like I can ethically recommend here!