Hi there. I was wondering if anybody has been to Mbidi lodge? John, aka the "tigerman" did a "snake show" the other day for a group of black primary school students. He started off by asking who was scared of snakes and when only a couple kids put up their hands, he opened an enclosure and pulled out a "snake" and threw it into them... (obviously it was only a rubber snake) but the poor kids actually panicked completely!!! They stampeded out of the arena nearly trampling each other!!! Next he was talking about his yellow anaconda, but his assistant only handled the snake with metal tongs and held onto it with the tongs by its tail! Even when carrying the snake back to its enclosure! He continued on to tell these poor kids about all the different types of snake venom and how dangerous snakes are... He even told them stories of how people he's worked with have died from snake bites! He even told them about Mike Perry's description of the pain of a puff adder bite! Again with the puffy it was only handled with metal tongs and pulled about by its tail. They never made use of a hook stick even once to support its head or body...
When they took the Mozambican Spitting cobra out, he and his assistant had goggles and a mask, but the kids only about a 1m from the platform had no safety equipment what so ever! He put the snake onto his table, and next thing lost control and the snake shot off the table fortunately away from the kids, (there was no barrier between him and the children), they had to go searching in building rubble behind the platform for the snake!
I would just like to know what your opinions on this type of show would be? I always thought snake shows should be educational, pitched at a level the audience can understand, and should teach people about snakes and their importance and how to avoid getting bitten... Not to scare the audience witless with horror stories!