If she is willing to accompany you to a pet shop and "meet" one before permanant nixing the idea, Goddess bless you both. If she simply is herptephobic, the only thing I can recommend is get your own place. Hiding an animal which has special needs when it comes to temperature, humidity and all that is not as easy as you might think. Also, do you really want her to posiibly find it, and catch hell for it as well as possibly endanger the animal?

If you haven’t already, educate her about bp’s. BE RESPECTFUL!!(I’m sure you are) DON’T LECTURE HER OR WHINE- if you whine, etc she might think you are not mature enough to handle,what seems to her, a big thing! Let her know that it is not going to get 10ft long and even if on the rare occasion it did bite it wouldn’t be more than a pinch. Share your plan with her as to where to keep it, how you plan to keep it from escaping, etc. Discuss rules about having it out of it’s cage, etc. Perhaps even get her to ask questions on here (or some other source)for reassurance.

In the case that she simply hates snakes no matter how "safe" they are you may just have to wait till you go to college/move out. But she may choose not to visit you then! My grandfather, a big seemingly fearless guy, who hunts for bears and has done lots in his life absolutely can not stand the site of snakes. I once had a picture of my sons with their garter and he couldn’t stand it! Go figure!

When my oldest son (now 8yo) started asking for a snake I said yes but not till he was old enough to take care of it on it’s own thinking about age 12. But our cat decided to bring home a garter snake one day and my kids begged to keep it. I figured it wasn’t so bad afterall and said yes. Sadly, it died. But we now have a bp that is doing well. And I actually find snakes and other reptiles cute and fun to have now! My friends and family are in total disbelief!

I should note here that my own mother would not come to our house for a good week (my parents visit often) when we kept the garter. And she nearly flipped when we allowed our son to get a bp at a reptile show. She barely talked to me for a few days. And I’m 32 yo!

She will now (barely)tolerate it out of it’s cage and in the same room as her as long as my son keeps it away from her. She is very uptight while it’s out though. My grandfather won’t come here though!

Good Luck!

Lisa

PS: Would she be open to something smaller to start- like a garter or even a lizard? Then once she see’s it’s not so bad having a snake/reptile in the house you could introduce the idea of something bigger?