After all the talk last weekend of our patron saint, legend would have us believe that while St Patrick was busy evangelising and helping the pagans of Ireland to follow the path of Jesus, he also took the time to banish snakes from these soon-to-be sacred shores.
The snake has had a long and grievous career as an agent of the devil, the provider of forbidden fruit, and a symbol of evil. The Emerald Isle St Patrick had in mind was better off without these slippery surrogates of sin. So they were banished, slithering away never to be seen again.
In reality, Ireland is one of only a handful of countries, including Greenland, Iceland, and New Zealand, that never had any snakes to begin with. A mix of climate, tides, and geography over hundreds of thousands of years meant that although they made it to Britain via a landbridge to Europe, they never reached us and thus never set up camp here.Which is probably one of the reasons that the market for and curiosity about these creatures has exploded in recent years.
“They’ve become more popular over the last two or three years,” says Aaron Dunlea-O’Brien, owner of Dob’s Pets and Exotics in Cork.
“People are online and watching TikToks and they want something a little out of the ordinary. I think more people are living in apartments now and they don’t have room for a dog or a cat. With a snake, you can create a nice little habitat in a corner of a room and it’s not going to take up as much time or space.”
Aaron opened his first shop four years ago when he was just 20 years old. It seems remarkably young and entrepreneurial, but much of the groundwork for his business had been laid years before.
“I started keeping reptiles at a very young age at home,” he says. “My mother was very into animals and she got me into them. My dad took a little more to come around but it was the only hobby I was onto really and once he saw that, he was happy to let me get on with it.
“Then I started breeding them and realised I could potentially turn it into a business if I could get it right. It got to a point where I was going out meeting people or they were coming to the house in Douglas to buy animals, so I knew I could probably push it further.”
Aaron still keeps a good “10 or 15 snakes at home” and at any given time he’ll have between 30 and 40 residing in the shop. So does he have a favourite?
“Off the top of my head, I’d say my favourite snake is the green tree python. They don’t act like other snakes. They stay high up in branches rather than on the ground, so you can set up a nice enclosure with plants and you don’t have to worry about trampling on them.
“They’re a display animal really. We have about 30 snakes in here at the moment. Corn snakes and ball pythons are our most popular snakes and the ones we’d recommend people start on. Both of them are quite relaxed and non-flighty. With enough handling as babies, they become used to it and they don’t mind being taken out of their enclosure. The other thing would be size, so you’d be looking at five to five-and-a-half feet maximum, which sounds very big when you’re not used to snakes but if you compare that to a 20ft python it’s a big difference.”
It all sounds a little scary but Paula Hanrahan, director and founder of Kids Club Ireland says that snake and reptile handling has never been more popular.
“People are not used to these animals so I think they find them intriguing,” says Paula. “Children don’t really have the same level of fear that a lot of the parents do. So it’s exciting and the parents get as much of a wow factor out of it as the kids, to be honest.
They’re also tactile, so we get requests to do parties for people with special needs and autism support groups because people find them so soothing.
One of those who works with Paula is Melanie Chazanne-Lyons, of Reptile Haven Education. Melanie got her first snake when she was 17 years old but again, the fascination began when she was much younger.
“I can’t remember the circumstances exactly but I was about six and I remember finding out that people didn’t like reptiles,” recalls the 40-year-old. “I was so shocked when I discovered that and I remember consciously deciding that I was going to make up for everyone else and really love them.”
It’s a love that she now imparts every day with highly informative reptile workshops in schools and at parties that feature corn snakes, other reptiles, and of course the star of the show, a Burmese python.
“Not one day is ever the same,” she says. “You’re meeting different people every day and getting different questions and different reactions.
“One of the biggest things for me is watching people change their minds and their attitudes to snakes as they get more comfortable with them.
“Early on in the workshop, I’ll go around and point out some of the features on the snake and as I do that I might bring them a little closer to people and it’s a good way of gauging how comfortable people are with them.
“From there, they’ll gradually get more and more comfortable and you go from situations where people are petrified to them handling and touching a python. We mainly go into secondary schools and seeing the students there step out of their comfort zones and challenge themselves is great. It’s quite rewarding.”
At Fota Island Wildlife Park in Cork, visitors can see snakes in something more akin to their natural habitat.
“We provide all the animals here with fairly big enclosures and that includes the snakes,” says Julien Fonteneau, the park’s lead ranger.
“We try to replicate their habitat as much as we can in the tropical house. When you visit, there’s always someone here who will happily answer any questions, whether that’s one of the rangers or the guides from education.
“We have three different breeds, the ball python, the dumeril Madagascan boa, which can get quite large, and the Jamaican boa, which is quite a dangerous and rare breed and is in a conservation programme that we are part of here at Fota.”
Julien, who originally hails from France, has worked with snakes for over 25 years and is still learning more.
“They are fascinating,” he says. “There are so many different breeds and they all have different needs, so you always have to adapt the habitat accordingly and they can have a wide range of different behaviours. Some are nocturnal, some diurnal, they eat different food, and have different ways of hunting and different temperaments. So you’re always learning. You never know everything about them.”
