LIVE AVERSIONS part2 (Herpetophobia)

Hello guys! Second version is out!

This post ‘live aversions” started with me previous post on katsaridaphobia (fear of cockroaches). In case you missed out, you can go back to read through.

Today however is about another of my several live aversions. This has to be the biggest of all my live phobias.
This is called Herpetophobia- the fear of reptiles!... I feel like there should be a drum roll as I introduce these set of animals. There are a vast specie of reptiles. However, this post is focused on snakes and geckos.

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Reptiles??!! I lack a suitable adjective to qualify these creatures. For some reasons, most people seem to dislike these creatures as well. When I was a bit younger, I didn’t have any explanation for my phobia. Probably because they seem very different from the usual animals around, especially snakes. Other animals I was farmiliar with as a child had feats but how come snakes don’t have any? They’re literally moving ropes! It was pretty strange to me. My phobia at this time was mild until of course I had the experience of my life!

Once upon a time (2012 precisely), My mum was supervising our house that was under construction. She was a bit sick at the time (herpatitis) and couldn’t do so much.

She sent my elder brother, my cousin and I (we were all teenagers) to the farm to pack some already harvested cassava. We were a bit reluctant to go because it rained the previous night and everywhere was pretty cold and wet.

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However, we weren’t in any position to refuse so we set out into the wet and cold bush. The distance from where my mum was supervising our house to the farm was not far. As we walked the bush part, I kept trying to dodge the wet bushes from touching my body. This was pretty much useless as the bush part was narrow and being touched by wet plants was unavoidable.

When we got to the farm, we started packing the cassava tubers while we talked about a bunch of teenage stuffs. We were so caught up in our discussions that we didn’t realize how loud we were.

Just in the middle of our engagement, A light green, long and big sized snake came out from hiding and started walking (or crawling) majestically via our fronts!

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We were stunned! A snake of that size in the farm with three teenagers and every corner surrounded by bushes!

Saying I was scared would be the biggest understatement of all time!
With the rush of adrenaline, the three of us ran off in different directions. Funny thing is that everywhere was covered with wet and cold bushes with a chance of habouring more snakes but we had no choice. We had one big snake right in front of us and we just had to run!

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In that moment I wasn’t even in control of my actions anymore. As I was running, I had images of what that animal could probably do to any of us and what would happen if I meet another one in the direction I ran to. I was terrified to say the least.

In the middle of that chaos, my brother shouted that it had gone and we needed to come back together since running out of the farm individually was more risky. We all came back.

Guess what?! In the middle of our fear driven drama, the snake was just passing. It didn’t go after anyone of us. We later realized that it was our loud noise during our discussion that made the snake to come out. It was changing location to a more quiet place since we made that location less conducieve for it (or him or her.. whatever).

We hurridly packed the remaining tubers and rushed out of the farm, walking as fast as we could and praying that we don’t meet any more of that animal.

Imagine the relief we felt when we finally got to an open place.
That was one hell of an experience for me.

After all these years, I still haven’t forgotten how horrified I was and as you would guess, my phobia for snakes intensified.

We never went back to the farm because my mum’s sickness got serious and she died few months afterwards. We had to relocate from Abia State to live with my dad in Lagos, Nigeria after the funeral so there was no one to continue taking care of the farm.

Geckos however have never been horrifying. I find them really peaceful. They seem to respect people's territory unlike cockroaches. So I had no problem with them until of course, I had to deal with a bunch of them.

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I had minor issue with accommodation and had to live with a family friend in their old house. For reasons unknown to me, the house harboured quite a number of geckos. Then, the so called peaceful reptile became a nuisance. They were just everywhere! Their sounds disturbed my sleep most of the time. Their population was what made me develop the dislike for them. I looked up ways to get rid of them online and tried the ones I could but still, they kept coming back. During my sleep, I would really be hoping that those geckos do not crawl anywhere close to me. I had that thought throughout the period I stayed in that house which was almost a year. That developed a little bit of gecko phobia in me.

So, there you have it!

Do you have similar phobias? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section.

Thanks so much for your continuous support!

See you in the next post!