Rosa Fond is afraid of snakes. She looks at them, respects them, but avoids touching them whenever she can.
That is why what she did on a road in Brooksville, Florida, in late March 2019, surprised even her. She saw a black snake with its head trapped inside a Bud Light can and could not just drive on. She got out of the car, took a deep breath, and began a rescue that turned into a four-minute battle: the animal coiled around her arm as she tried to free it without hurting it.
She recorded everything and uploaded it to Facebook, never imagining that nearly 60,000 people would see it. “I couldn’t let it die”, she later said. Fond had already rescued dogs, horses, mice, and even alligators through the organization she founded, Humans and Animals United. But this time, fear had a name of its own, and she still decided to face it for an animal she did not even like touching.