what happens if you...

It is a great pity James, in my opinion, that in this country we now have a don't touch mentality for anything in the natural world. Many people on this forum will have got interested by collecting frog spawn and watching it grow into froglets or picking up slow worms and grass snakes and feeling them slithering across their arms.

As you know slow worms and lizards will shed their tails as an escape strategy to distract the enemy, but gentle handling by a human is unlikely to upset them enough to do this. Grass snakes more readily react to handling by covering your hands in a strong smell. Being bitten by a grass snake might be troublesome if the bite became infected from the grass snake and this might result in painful swelling. A lizard would have a job to get its little mouth to bite a human I would have thought.

If you're not used to handling wriggling reps then perhaps best to be with someone experienced who can hand the creature to you gently. You don't want to drop it.

I've always been a bit surprised that some herpers feel the need to handle reptiles regularly. Fair enough if you're taking measurements or relocating etc then it needs to be done but otherwise it's surely an uneccessary stress on the animal. Presumably not a huge stress but a stress none the less. Just my opinion but I can proudly say I've seen thousands of reptiles of all British species and have never handled or even touched a single one.

PS you can see the smile on this guys face on how impressive the snake was to him magic

Also the snake was as long as some of the children were tall

snake measured 109cm the youngest girl was 114cm tall!

Grass snakes, larger ones usually thrash like mad at first whilst covering  you in smelly stuff. (Best keep them at arms length until they have finished). Allow them to curl around your hand whilst gripping them and they will soon calm down. I've yet to be bitten by a grass snake though older females are more likely to bite apparently. The only time I've come in contact with a grass snakes teeth was whilst carrying one that was playing dead to my field bag. The tiny pin pricks did bleed quite a bit but it wasn't painful. more itchy.

Slow-worms - 99% of tail sheds are caused by trying to capture the animal by the tail. If you grasp it mid body and handle gently there should be no problem. The exception is when they are well warmed up in which case they can thrash wildly - best not handle them if your not sure of techniques in hot weather.

Common lizards will also tail shed if not handled carefully. They can and do bite, but it is painless and doesn't break the skin.

I don't actually believe it is a bad thing for those interested in our native herps to handle the animals sometimes. Most stress would occur during attempts to collect data such as SV length if the handler was inexperienced i.e when some form of restraint is required - this is where really one should spend some time with experienced workers.

Occasionally capturing and free handling the harmless native reptiles for a closer look in my mind really is not a problem, though I only generally capture reptiles during translocation works these days and occasionally for photography/ID work at survey sites.