Model Emma Quinlan looks set to take the Irish fashion world by storm, by combining her stunning looks with her unusual love for her pet snakes.
The feisty model, who got her first taste of life in the spotlight as a dancer in the worldfamous Moulin Rouge in Paris, set tongues wagging when she posed for a daring photo-shoot with her pet snakes earlier this year.
And the animal-lover says that working with her pets is the perfect job.
“Everything I do is with them. I do a lot of promotional work for companies and they all love to use some of the snakes,” she told the Evening Herald.
“I’m a Latin dancer as well so I work in different clubs, like The Tassel Club here and abroad with the snakes as well.”
“I’m sort of like a modern-day snake charmer – there are a few dancers who use snakes in their acts as well but I think I’m one of the only people who can do different tricks with them. I can do things like the kiss of death which is where you totally open your throat.”
While most people would go to great lengths to avoid any contact with a snake, Emma says that the key to doing the tricks is to forget about your fear. “The best thing to do is just to bite the bullet and do it. I’ve been bitten occasionally but only through my own stupidity and it’s mostly by younger snakes because they don’t really know what they’re doing. None of my older snakes would ever bite me.
“I have one snake, Squirt, who I used in the photo-shoot who comes everywhere with me. I raised her from a hatchling so she’s very attached.
“She follows me around the house at home and when I’m driving in the car with her, she always manages to get out of whatever box I have her in – which always gives bus passengers a huge fright when they look out of the window and see this yellow snake sitting in the front seat beside me!”
Along with her day job, which Emma fell into by chance after being encouraged to enter the Miss Ireland contest by former Miss Ireland, Andrea Roche, she is also kept busy with her hobby – which sees her taking on abandoned lizards and snakes.
“I do a lot of rescues as well so I have a load of lizards with missing toes and things like that. But I mostly have bigger snakes and lizards – I prefer them,” she said.
“I keep them at home in six huge tanks that we just built in our garage.
“And we’re hoping to build another two rooms to house some of the bigger snakes in, Bubbles and Squirt, because they are going to grow to be really big.”
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