MEXICO — About 80 children and their parents marveled at Rob White’s annual presentation of snakes Tuesday morning in the Municipal Building.

After teaching everyone about his two ball pythons, red-tailed boa, king snake and corn snake, and fielding questions, White got to the children’s favorite part — wearing and holding his snakes while posing for pictures taken by their parents.

The Terrific Tuesdays event was part of the Mexico Public Library’s summer reading incentive program. This year’s theme is based on “Star Wars” : “Read … and May the Books be with You!”

Holding up his nearly 4-foot-long king snake, Zorro, with two hands, White said it has a natural camouflage ability to resemble the poisonous coral snake so it can frighten away animals that know not to mess with poisonous snakes.

“All snakes that you see outside are wild snakes,” White said, answering a young girl’s question. He warned them not to touch wild snakes.

Wild snakes “can only do three things,” he said.

“If they sense you coming, they try to crawl away. But if you see them and you decide you’re going to go try and pick them up, they’re going to let you know like Mufasa was doing over here, he’s going to open his mouth and he’s going to hiss at you and puff himself up to look bigger,” White said of his red-tailed boa.

“And then, if you say, ‘Well, he’s just a little snake. I can pick him up like they do on TV,’ I suggest if you are going to go out and pick up a wild snake, hold it a couple of inches from its head and support the back part of his body.

“If you’re holding the snake dangling in the air, that’s not very comfortable,” White said. “If you hold it with two hands, you may be lucky enough to hold a wild snake, and if it still wants to get away, it will poop on you. And if it does, you’re going to put that snake down quickly and run for the nearest open water. Because when they poop in a defensive state, it stinks terribly.”

One child asked if he owns a rattlesnake.

“Nope,” White said, shaking his head from side to side. “You can’t own a rattlesnake in the state of Maine unless you have an exotic animals permit. Rattlesnakes are poisonous.

“There’s two types of snakes: poisonous and constrictors,” he said, answering another question. “Poisonous snakes, if they bite you, they’re going to poison your system with some type of poison that is going to attack your nervous system, which will slowly shut down your body functions — your heart, your brain, your lungs.”

White explained that antidotes are available for most snake bites and are created from snake venom.

For the hands-on part of his program, White had the children line up by the table he was using. He let two youngsters at a time either hold the snakes or wear them around their necks.

“That was pretty cool,” Zachary Daniello, 10, of St. George said after holding a ball python on his neck. “It was wrapping itself around my neck and I felt the scales moving.”

He wanted to own a snake after that experience.

Olivia Milligan, 7, of Rumford, said that holding snakes was old hat. She said White is her cousin, so she already knew how snakes feel when crawling around on one’s shoulders.

The library’s summer reading program runs from June 23 to Aug. 15. For more information, call the library at 364-3281 or visit its Facebook site at www.facebook.com/pages/Mexico-Public-Library/164453480268420.

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