Originally posted by Rad:
But with a poisonous snake you may only get one mistake and with those odds who is more important the child or the snake?.
Exchange "anything dangerous" for "poisonous snake", and perhaps you see the irrationality of that statement.
In my small town, every year I read of at least 1 death by drowning, 1 by bicycle, 4 by automobile, .5 by fire, 1 by tractor, .5 by lightning, .5 by firearms, etc. In 33 years, I have never read of a single death by snake in my town... or my entire Parish (County) for that matter. Your situation may be different!
Nothing in this world is more important to us than our children. Yet life goes on. We still drive, ride, mow, swim, fish, shoot, and do all those activities that are less than 100% safe. If I thought it would help keep my children safe, I would kill every snake I saw. The facts and statistics do not support that at all. The snake you see never bites you. It's the snake you do not see that bites you. Therefore it makes sense to kill the snake you can not see, and leave the innocent one you can see alone.
I am not scorning or belittling people who fear snakes. I understand the irrational fear of snakes. My own wife is a victim, and is incurable. The point I would like to make is that it does far more harm than good to kill any snake. That's all.
Our instincts work just great. Snakes instinctively fear you, you instinctively fear snakes. That works wonderfully to keep you apart, except for that rare unseen snake hidden under something that you step on or uncover suddenly.
