Well I'm not particularly afraid of them, especially the non-poisonous ones, I just have a healthy respect for the dangerous ones. I used to like to play with garter snakes and green snakes and frogs and lizards when I was a little girl. Mama always said I shoulda been a boy. She has a picture of me when I was 3 yrs old and we were down in Florida at that tourist trap called Silver Springs and the man at the reptile show had put a 6ft boa constrictor around my neck. It was so big it drug the ground on both sides. It was cool! So I guess I was warped at an early age.
It may have been the only time but your Mom was wrong......
: )