Harold typically loves the ladies, but he just wasn’t having it from this reporter on Friday.

After being manhandled for the better part of the afternoon, the corn snake balled up in my hand, declining to comment.

Luckily, his human caretakers spoke for him.

“He’s become a bit of a celebrity,” said John Maerz, an assistant professor whose herpetology classes care for Harold. “He’s completely harmless and spectacularly beautiful, so he became a recruitment tool for the school. He apparently has his own MySpace page.”

The gentle corn snake was just one of the myriad creatures on display at the reptile and amphibian showcase in front of the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources on Friday.

Hosted by the University’s Herpetological Society and aided by Maerz’s class and veterinary school volunteers, the event was an opportunity to educate passersby about these creatures.

“One of the goals we put forth in the semester was: you should know more than the person off the street and dispel myths,” Maerz said. “If we succeed today by having somebody walk by and say, ‘I’ll look, but not touch a snake,’ and we can get them to touch a snake, we can make progress.”

In the increasingly heated day, junior ecology major Ernie Osburn from Marietta threw ice in a plastic tank to cool off the water for an amphiuma, or aquatic salamander.

“He likes swampy areas,” he said. “You wouldn’t see him very often unless you went digging for it.”

Behind Osburn, senior Megan Heidenreich, a biological science major from Seminole, Fla., showed off her pet Fowler’s toad, Barnaby, which she found while on a class assignment.

“He absolutely loves to lounge in the pool and he loves to tease my cat,” Heidenreich said, picking up Barnaby by the hind legs for a better view. “We’re learning a lot about each other. I’m kind of in love.”

However, Heidenreich is usually in the minority when it comes to such feelings.

“For these animals, the two biggest things that threaten them are disinterest and in the case of things like the snakes, persecution,” Maerz said. “It’s not uncommon for people, even if they know it’s harmless snake, to just kill it because they’re uncomfortable.”

Contrary to popular belief, snakes are more afraid of people than vice versa, said Phinizy Spalding, a senior marketing major.

Holding his own pet python named Makuleke, Spalding discussed the stereotypes about snakes.

“People assume that a snake will go out of the way to bite them, but it’s the last thing they want to do,” he said.

By dispelling such harmful assumptions and educating the public on these understudied animals, Maerz said he hopes to increase awareness of their importance.

“Georgia is home to more species of reptiles and amphibians than any other state,” he said. “This is a massive part of our state’s natural heritage. We steward that diversity.”