snakegetters

For the most part I agree with you completely. As for this statement, it depends on how you define freehandling. I agree that there is no reason to "play" with a venomous snake as you would a nonvenomous one. That's just stupid. I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who use animals as props for their personal ego, especially when they win Darwin Awards for their silliness.

However there are a few species that are physically fragile enough to require special measures for their veterinary care and even some routine husbandry handling, because they are at high risk of being injured or stressed to the point of severe debilitation if they are restrained. These are the animals I am likely to use my hands to lift rather than just a hook. I may use a bare hand on the lower midbody and a Kevlar gloved hand on the upper third if there is not a second person available to wield a python hook for better body support of the animal. Or a standard hook may be used just to lightly direct the head, with my hand and arm comfortably supporting the snake's weight.

I also don't normally use restraint to give routine injections. I generally just maneuver the head into a tangle of something to keep the business end occupied. It's annoying when using the aminoglycosides and other potentially nephrotoxic drugs because then you have to inject into the front end of the snake, and that gets a little trickier. Generally I resort to tubing for those procedures. But anything that isn't cleared by the renal portal route generally gets delivered as an unrestrained IM injection into the caudal end in adults of most species.

I don't really consider this freehandling, and I don't ever do it just for fun, but certainly there is a greater risk to the handler with these practices. I make the conscious choice to skirt a thinner edge of safety for myself so that I can optimize recovery in my patients and maintain some delicate species without stressing or injuring them. It is a pretty thin margin sometimes, and there are moments where I am within physical range to be bitten if my predictions about the snake's behavior are wrong. There are also times when I am not using any safety tools, but working mainly with my bare hands to minimize the risk of injury to the animal. Again, not something I would ever do just for fun. That's definitely not the point of the exercise.

I don't post pictures of some of the riskier techniques I use, because they may be misunderstood out of context as endorsing "daredevil" behavior around venomous snakes. I get endlessly frustrated because most people get the absolute opposite message from what I intend to convey. I just can't seem to explain in a way that most people understand that it's not supposed to be about the handler at all.

Most people seem to be solidly set in the egocentric mindset that it's all about the handler's skill and daring. That's all they are capable of seeing when they look at a photo of a cobra being gently nabbed behind the hood so that it can be given humane veterinary treatment without the need for rough pinning. They tend to see "Mighty handler masters the terrible cobra" in that kind of image, and that is the diametric opposite of what is actually happening here.

This is what I try to convey to people, without much success. I am not the important factor in this equation. Don't bother paying much attention to the human. The person doing the handling is not interesting and not relevant to what you should be learning from this scene. Focus on the special needs of the wild animal patient and the humane, gentle techniques being used to give good quality care without putting the animal at risk of injury. Most people can't understand this viewpoint and would rather stare at the Mighty Snake Master, which makes me annoyed and uncomfortable.

I feel that the whole concept of the "Mighty Snake Master" takes the focus away from the animals' comfort and welfare and makes them props for the human ego. I don't think that is healthy for either the snakes or the people working with them.