Taking A Snake To School (Animal Story 20)

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I hope this post will find some readers so that I can fill my coffers. Several members who read my last snake story* mentioned that they couldn’t even look at the photo of the snake. I must confess that I’m not attracted by snakes and would never want to have one at home as a pet but I don’t mind looking at them. But in order not to be responsible for heart attacks among my readers, I've chosen a photo of a fake snake (rhyme!) When my husband and I visited Florida many moons ago, we passed a place where someone kept snakes in cages and exhibited them like it is done in zoos. We bought tickets and looked at them. It must be said that there isn’t much to see as snakes usually do nothing but lie around and doze. The only action may happen during feeding time, but we weren’t there then. Whatever. What I’m telling you today didn‘t happen to me but to my mother. She was a teacher at a trade school for home economics. Her pupils were exclusively girls. It so happened, however, that at the end of her teaching career she taught young men who wanted to become captains or pilots on cargo ships. We lived in a town in the north of Germany which has a special school for them. My mother taught German. She wanted to help her pupils learn to speak freely in front of an audience. She didn’t give them topics but told them to find one themselves which they found interesting. One young man talked about his pet snake. Certainly a topic not many people can talk about. Funnily, many decades later, I had a pupil who chose the same topic for his speech in my English lesson. What he told us wasn’t bad, but he ended without the high point my mother experienced. When her pupil had ended, she asked if he had brought a photo so that one could have an idea what the animal looked like. He grinned and lifted his pullover. The snake was wound round his waist! It obviously liked it there as it hadn’t moved the whole time. It wasn’t a very big snake so that the pullover didn’t bulge - or the young man was on the fatty side and had a bit of a spare tyre so that the extra bulge wasn’t noticeable. I don’t remember what my mother told me. He got a good mark for his performance! ---- P.S. I was looking for a fitting photo but couldn't find a good one. I hope you like the one of the old man in Cuba with his specimen made of straw. === If you're interested in more animal stories, click on the green box above the title. === *See here: