Welcome to Roughing it with Ruth: the channel where everything is a bit rough around the edges!
When I first started hiking and backpacking, my major fear was snakes. I was so scared of snakes
that I almost didn't go on my very first overnight backpacking trip, but I did find one thing that
made me get over my fear of snakes and become a lot more calm and confident around them in
the outdoors. That one thing was simply learning more about them. Before I knew a whole lot about
snakes, I had quite a lot of misconceptions about them that made them seem a lot more
scary than they actually are. One of the things that I thought was that snakes might actively
come after you - like chase you or come into your tent or try to get your food - and almost every
single snake in the world is not going to behave like that. They are generally pretty scared of you
and all they want to do is get away. Another thing that I found extremely helpful was just being able
to identify the different snakes out there. Before I knew a lot about snakes, I also thought that the
vast majority of snakes were venomous and the vast majority of those were, like, deadly venomous (if
you got bitten you were just gonna die) and that is also very untrue in South Africa, at least.
So learning to identify what the different snakes are can also take away a lot of the fear
because there are several snakes out there that are completely harmless.
One of the examples that immediately comes to my mind is the Egg Eater in South Africa. It can look
pretty scary: it's got this slit pupil like a cat's eye and it rubs its keeled scales together
to make a kind of hissing noise and it will also gape open its mouth, which is colored black on
the inside, but all of that is simply to try and scare away predators that want to eat it,
because it actually has no defenses. It has no venom, it can't even really bite you because it
eats eggs whole. Pretty much all of the knowledge that I gained about snakes was from the African
Snake Bite Institute and I'll put a link in the video description to their website. They have
some absolutely excellent articles and posters on their website which help you identify snakes
and teach you about snakes. They also run courses all over the country, but one of the things that
I found extremely beneficial, especially during the covid19 pandemic lockdown in South Africa,
was their online courses. They have a beginner snake course, an advanced snake course and
a first aid and snake bite course. All of those courses I have done and completed, and they are
some of the best courses available online in my opinion. The beginner snake identification course
is only a hundred rand and it is extremely informative and helpful for anyone to do. Once you
pay your registration fee, there's no time limit, you can do the course in whatever amount of time
suits you. The only time limits are with the timed quizzes at the end of each section. Once you start
that quiz you do need to complete it in a certain amount of time, which is a fairly generous time
limit in my experience, but other than that you can complete the course at your own pace
and once you have completed it you get a digital certificate. The advanced snake course and the
snakebite and first aid course are a little bit more expensive. They're currently R500 for each of
those courses and it's because those courses are a little bit more in-depth and involved, but if you
are interested in snakes after doing the beginners identification course then I would definitely
recommend continuing and doing those other two courses as well. I know that fear of snakes is not
something that only affects me. Many people are very scared of snakes. If you have your own tips
or tricks for getting over that fear or dealing with that fear when you're out on the trail,
then please leave them in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching this video! If you
would like to see more from me, then you can click on my channel name to see videos that I've made in
the past or you can subscribe to my channel to see videos that I'm going to make in the future.