Albert

This is Albert, The Flatmate's royal python - and people who know me will know that I'm not good around snakes.

When Sunshine and I first moved into where we are now, the snake was an issue. I've had a lifelong phobia of snakes. I've been at natural history museums and walked quickly past skeletons of snakes because they made me feel nervous. Pictures of snakes give me nightmares. So can't say I was a happy bunny to be living with one. Fortunately The Flatmate has been good about not getting him out while I'm in the house.

I on the other hand have been trying to conquer this fear by standing by The Flatmate's bedroom door (yup that's as far I was willing to go) and staring into Albert's tank at the other end of the room. Yesterday though we had some friends over who asked about Albert and I said "OK, bring him out then", which I can assure you was an incredible achievement on my part!

Fortunately for me Albert's fairly docile - or as The Flatmate put it "they're like the Labradors of the snake world". He doesn't do much of the slithering or forked-tongue-sticky-outy thing which really disturbs me. Or hiss or show fangs or anything like that. Infact he's got quite a small non-threatening head, and he spent most of the time just kind of 'hanging out' not doing much. So I got out the camera and took a bunch of photos - and the drawings above are from those. This is as close as I've ever been to a snake and not freaked out - I'm quite proud of myself. Although the funny foreshortened head shot was Sunshine taking a close-up macro shot. Staring straight into Albert's eyes is still not quite where I am yet ...