If you know me personally, I will more than likely have chewed your ears off about my snakes. ( I tell everybody who will listen ) Any snake keeper will tell you, when feeding your snakes you should use the proper tools. You should use long tongs to dangle the poor frozen rats for the snakes to strike at. This means that the chances of you getting bitten are a lot less.
Not me, I don’t mind handling the rats; I’m not squeamish, so I use my hands. I find tongs fiddly and I just find it quicker and easier to use my hands to get the job done.
So last night was feeding time at my little zoo, I fed each of my snakes by hand, and as a tool or method of feeding it worked just fine thank you very much. It was a quick, simple, easy and painless process… so I thought.
Baring in mind I have 13 snakes, and Debra usually polishes off 3 rats, so that is 15 rats that passed through my hands. I put my hand in the Rub of one of my larger snakes, Russell, to move him back onto his paper. He must have smelt a rat. He struck and bit my hand. I screamed, (naturally, I had a snake locked onto my hand!) and I didn’t stop screaming for about 30 seconds until I realised though, that it actually wasn’t hurting. I didn’t bleed that much, Russ didn’t seem fazed, so no harm done right?
Wrong.
Firstly Russell had just finished eating his rat, and my tetanus ran out last year. I had to arrange an appointment with my doctor to go and have my injection again, they advised I have it ASAP so I had to take time out of work to go get this done. Again, not too much of a problem, however being team leader this meant that Quality Control wasn’t completed that evening and I had to finish it in the morning which meant our clients got their reports later than usual. Albeit only half an hour, yet still late.
Time and money lost.
I also wanted to get Russell checked out because he caught my ring when biting me, I wanted to make sure the poor little biter was okay… I have a specialist vet who is miles away. They only operate 9-5. Another morning off work.
Time and money lost.
Russell then decided he wasn’t interested in rats any more… the next few feeds were a nightmare. He just stopped eating. So I had bought and defrosted the rats and despite me sitting with him for ages he wouldn’t take them.
Time and money lost.
If you don’t use the correct marketing tools for a job, because it’s cheaper or quicker, you could lose so much time and money… equally if you don’t use the correct tools for your business when planning your marketing strategy you could lose so much time and money. Albeit mine was on a small scale… if you’re not careful, you may not be so lucky.
Over the next few weeks/months I aim to help you find the right tools for your marketing strategy, through our blog posts. I aim to give you as much info myself, along with help from my colleagues, my suppliers, my clients, my peers and my friends, to enable you pick the best tools to market your business.
Soph
