Chandler Hagan tells Ann Somers about a person who inspired her love of the natural world.
AS: Now who in your life was an important person in shaping your view of the natural world?
CH: I saw that question and I thought about that, and I think it would have to be my aunt Kathy. She went to Wilmington for marine biology or marine science of some kind, and she kind of taught me that no animals were scary, no animals were bad. She had hissing cock—Madagascar hissing cockroaches as pets.
AS: Oh nice.
CH: And she ran a camp at Camp Fear Botanical Gardens in Fayetteville, and I used to go stay with her over the summer and, you know, she would just pile snakes, not more than one, on top of me. I would have a corn snake wrapped around my pony tail. And so she really taught me that nothing was scary or bad just because it was a lizard or a snake or anything like that. Or even the hissing cockroaches I got to where I would hold them and pet them. So I would say it was definitely her.
Click to listen: