Feeder Mouse

[TheSnakeLady]

I'm not sure if this story goes here or elsewhere, but since the kid involved wasn't buying from us, I figured it fit okay in sightings. If it belongs elsewhere, please move it.

So my friend and I had a booth at the reptile show and were selling various snakes. Next door is a booth that is selling feeder mice, both the frozen kind and the live kind.

Kids are swarming around the tub with the baby and fuzzy mice, picking them up and handling them when the seller is busy with other customers and generally driving the mouse people nuts trying to keep track of who has paid and who's with whom and so on.

One little boy is holding this fuzzy mouse with grey fur, and he turns around to show us his hand with the mouse in it.

My friend jokingly asks, "Is that a snack?"

I add in, "A snake snack at any rate."

The look on the kid's face is best described as the "Oh-my-god-you-killed-bambi" look, sort of a mixture of disbelief and horror. He backs away from us, the you-killed-bambi look on his face the whole time.


Now before you all start flaming me, keep in mind that this was at a REPTILE show. My friend and I were just joking like we would with anybody else there, and most people would've joked along with us. I guess nobody ever bothered to tell this kid that snakes eat mice.

[Ree]

That was unfortunate. It's obvious that you feel bad about it.

Poor little guy. What a harsh life lesson to learn.

The thing here is that you didn't grab the mouse from him and feed it to a snake right in front of him. (At least, I didn't get that impression.)

You made a joke.

Unfortunately, the little guy had been shielded from the hard facts of life - that mice don't wear cute little vests and play all day with talking bears and turtles, or their best friend, Sammy Snake, then go home to be tucked in at night by a Mommy in an apron.

Don't beat yourself up over it.

I'm sure the little guy wasn't scarred for life or traumatized by it, and he probably doesn't even remember it now. Children are pretty resilient.

[NightAngel]

True that Ree- kids are pretty resiliant.

And, it was a reptile show so my guess is that at some point during the day the kid would have learned the cold, hard facts about what snakes eat anyway. There was no way you could've known you were talking to probably the one person at the show who wasn't already privvy to that info.

[TheSnakeLady]

It's obvious that you feel bad about it.

Actually, no. My friend and I thought it was hilarious.

[Ree]

Ah...well, I figured since you posted in "Sightings" that you were doing a self-sighting, and, since you asked for no flaming because you made the joke without realizing the child didn't know the truth, I assumed you felt bad.

I don't think I could laugh at the situation. Personally, I would have felt bad to be the one to burst the child's bubble, but if I was the parent, I would take it as an opportunity to educate my child about the facts of life and the whole "food chain" thing.

I mean, if the child was visiting a farm and playing with the baby chicks or petting the calves or lambs, or holding the little piglets, it would probably be a similar thing for him to find out they could be on his own dinner plate within a few years.

I still don't think I could laugh about it when the child found out, though. Poor little kid.

[Sliceanddice]

the kid will cry to its parents, mom will over react, dad will laugh and in a week he wont care anymore