Well my dad tried to get me interested in natural history and he bought Hardy’s Encyclopedia of Animal History. So I was reading about gorillas and mammals and birds and little bit of everything else, so I had some bird books. He was tryin’ to spread my interest away from the reptiles. So I got sort of a general interest in animals of every kind as well. It’s just that the snakes were something that I could collect and keep and feed and watch and learn about their behavior. It was an easy animal to keep in captivity. You mentioned your father died young.
