The other day, a stranger showed up at my front door.

"Hi there," he said. "I intend to kill you, first chance I get. I can do it, too. I could take you out with one shot. Mind if I come in?

I thought about it, and you know, there aren't that many sociopathic killers around. And they have such a bad reputation. I think it's important to understand them better. So I showed the guy to my guest room.

The next day, another stranger was at the front door. He didn't want to kill me, but he didn't care if I lived or died. He, too, was carrying a large gun. He mentioned that he was pretty nervous and his judgment wasn't too good.

Hell of a handsome specimen, though. I really liked the look of him.

I told him he could sleep on the couch.

This may not seem too bright to you, but it seems perfectly sensible to me. Of course, I've been spending a lot of time at Hot Herp sites lately.

The term "hot herp" may have you thinking about porn and venereal disease, but that's because you're a basement-dwelling pervert. You should instead be thinking about snakes.

Real snakes, pervert.

Snakes with venom sacs, big scary fangs, and the will to use them.

See, that's what "hot" means in snake keeper lingo. Venomous snakes are hot. Non-venomous snakes are neither hot nor particularly cool. Who wants to hear about your harmless rat snake when the next guy on the message board is discussing his deadly black mamba?

Keeping venomous snakes at home is said to be a fast-growing hobby ... probably faster growing than anyone knows, since the numbers must be under-reported. If you had the five deadliest Australian snakes in your living room, would you want your insurance agent to know about it? Your city council? The police?

While some owners are upfront semi-pros who use their snakes in educational programs or sell milked venom to pharmaceutical companies, snake prices as low as $75 US have made hots a viable impulse purchase for anyone who happens to think owning a rattler would make them look cool. I realize I'm leaping to conclusions here, but I would guess not all of those guys are big into permits and paperwork.

The online hot herp keeping community is pretty chummy, which only makes sense. There aren't many places to turn when you want to enthuse about your bouncing baby boomslang, and there are even fewer places to learn the ins and outs of snake handling.

Surprisingly, most of the hot herp sites don't recommend snake handling at all. Handling stresses snakes and leads to unfortunate accidents. When keeping hot snakes in your home, safety should be a priority at all times.

These sites tells us that snakes are wild animals. They aren't pets. They're kept for their beauty ... for educational purposes ... as part of a conservation effort. Owners must have proper facilities and must never let their guard down. You aren't ready to house a hot until you understand the dangers.

Spend enough time surfing this community and keeping a deadly, untamed reptile in your home starts to sound pretty manageable. Sure, it's dangerous, but so's driving a car. With a few precautions, hot snake keeping is a hobby anyone can enjoy!

Do a little more reading, however, and you begin to get a sense of what this gang considers a reasonable amount of danger. Take, for example, the cautionary tale posted by the proud owner of a lovely young copperhead. I'm going to do him a kindness and not print his name, although he seemed to have no qualms about putting it all over his original post.

His story, in brief, was this: he was at a snake show a few hundred miles from his home when he spotted an attractive copperhead for sale. Since he didn't have one in his collection, he decided to buy it before starting the long drive home.

He arrived home tired and out of sorts, but decided to transfer the snake from its travel container to a proper cage before going to bed. Not at his best, he let the snake escape. He then opted to recapture the snake by grabbing its tail (known to snake catchers as "tailing"), and found himself with fangs in his thumb.

This allowed the snake to escape again. Reasoning that he'd already been bitten and it didn't matter anymore, he re-tailed the snake and dumped it in its new home. Then he took some pictures of the bite and -- get this -- WENT TO BED.

That's right. A copperhead chomped down on his thumb, a digit he presumably intended to use in future, and he responded by taking some snapshots and crawling into bed. Admittedly, copperheads are among the least poisonous of the pit vipers, but still, people ... am I wrong or does this guy sound like a GIBBERING lunatic?

Not sure yet? Consider what he did the next morning. He awoke, found his hand swollen and incredibly painful, realized he couldn't move his thumb, and immediately leapt into action. He went straight to his daughter's house for coffee.

While he was there, he took a few more photographs ... using his off hand. His daughter and son-in-law recommended he visit a hospital. Just for a little check up.

Now, knowing what you know about the snake owner, would you guess that he
(a) made fun of their ignorance, since they blew a little snake bite way out of proportion or (b) bragged to his message board about having had the conviction to resist their shrill demands?

As you may have guessed, that was a trick question. He did both.

Please, don't think this man was an aberration. I'm telling you, I have seen anecdotes that would turn your hair white. I've seen accompanying photographs. I could tell you about the man in South Africa who thought it would be safe as houses to spend a few days in a small room with a large number of black mambas ... and who was surprised as shit when one of them bit him. I could tell you about the guy who routinely heated his artificial arm so his snake would strike at it. Don't ask how he got the artificial arm in the first place.

I could tell you these stories for days and not run out of material. And when I was done, I suspect you would have come to the same conclusion I've reached:

We may be too afraid of poisonous snakes, considering the level of danger they realistically represent to the average person.

We may not be afraid enough of their owners.

What the hell am I saying? We should be afraid of the snakes, too. Those little fuckers can kill you.