OK…Just saw a snake in my yard…Shrieked like a little girl. Scared the bejezus out of me.
Question: Does everyone do that? Or is it just me. I mean, I have the major willies now…I swear to God I’d rather see Charles Manson standing at my back door then a snake.
So, does anyone see these vile, horrible beings and say “Oh, look at that beautiful creature. Ahhhh…I’m sure glad I live in the country!”
Or does everyone shriek like an idot, sic the dog on it and slam the door?
An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; A pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.
When I was a kid I used to play with the snake we would find all the time. Now they creep me out. Come to think of it though, I haven’t seen a snake in years knock wood
Well, there’s the Aussie “Crocodile Man” who has a nature series on TV. One show was about his quest to find an example of each of the 10 most poisonous snakes on earth. He found all but one (sea snake), and most of those he actually caught barehanded. Yep, there he was, on film, holding a very mad, very lethal reptile while saying “Isn’t she a beauty?!”.
The weird thing is, when I was a kid, I used to pick them up all the time. My neighbors and I would go “snake hunting” in the tall grass (garder snakes). I think my mom saw me once, gave the usual blood-curdling scream and scarred me for life. I know I’ll end up doing the same to my kids…Fortunately, my dog loves to be the “hero” and “git 'em!”
An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; A pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.
I love snakes and spiders, but grasshoppers and those moths that are about an inch long (I think they are called Millers) scare the living hell out of me.
Snakes definitely give me the heebie-jeebies. I can’t even look at 'em in a zoo cage for too long. Watching them move on land with no legs looks so…alien. Brrr. I can read a hundred explanations of how snakes locomote, but my mind will never “get it.”
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
Snakes don’t scare me too much, if I see them coming from a distance. If they’re all of a sudden just THERE, seemingly out of nowhere, yeah, I get freaked. But even from a distance, I do my best to give them a wide berth. I’m no snake expert, so I can’t identify which ones are poisonous & which ones aren’t. I don’t try & kill them or anything, I just get out of the way.
Insects in general don’t frighten me. I don’t like spiders, but I don’t freak out when they come around. If they’re close enough, I’ll squish 'em. If they’re not close, I’ll wait until they’re close enough, then I’ll squish ‘em. The only time a spider has truly scared me was on a visit to a nature preserve in Florida. Holy Toledo, they had some movie monster-sized spiders out there. Hanging from the trees that I was expected to walk under. Uh-uh. No freakin’ way.
Snakes don’t scare me at all. When I was very little, I crossed paths with a baby Masasagua rattler in MI. (We were at a nature center) Luckily, Mom was there to stop me from picking it up. I’ll handle non-poisonous snakes anytime. I had a brush with danger once while holding a large boa around my neck. It began to constrict my neck, and I’ll admit that scared the crap out of me. But my pals and I pried the bugger off, and there was no harm done.
I used to have snakes as pets. Corn snakes. Seven of them. They were the most wonderful, sedate, trusting beasties - like goldfish without water. If well raised and handled often (obdisclaimer, since there are always exceptions), you could remove them from their enclosures without fear and let them hang around your neck or arms and suck up your warm human vibes.
Unfortunately, the cost of feeding them grew to be awful, and I had to give them away to other good homes.
I still miss my Evil Minion, Skids. He turned many snake-fearers into at least snake-apathetics with his cool demeanor.
I like snakes. I like reptiles, period. My cousins used to catch rattlesnakes (they live out in Pope Valley, CA, which is pretty much the middle of nowhere, so I guess there wasn’t much else to do for excitement) … anyway, I gather it’s not all that dangerous if you’re careful. Not sure I’d have the nerve to handle a rattlesnake myself, tho’.
Snakes are OK. Living in exurbia as I do, we occasionally have various herpetoids (grass snakes, garter snakes, black snakes) hanging out on the property. One summer, my brother-in-law had a black snake living in the scree around his culvert. It kept his mother away all season; he sure liked that snake.
One of my wife’s friends had a rather large snake (I think a black racer) drop on him out of the rafters of a shed. He’s a little wary of snakes now, but I can understand his attitude.
The thing that seriously annoys me is the purchase of huge, quarter-million dollar homes in the east end of town (around an area known as “Rattlesnake Mountain” by yuppies who are oh-so-green…until they drive their SUVs back to the town offices and shakily cry out, “I saw a snake in my yard! Something has to be done to protect my children and Muffy, my toy poodle!” Hey, you thought maybe that area was named “Rattlesnake Mountin” because the cartographers thought it would be kewl?
“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”
My relationship with snakes is strange…I have a friend with a python- a big, slow thing. He doesn’t bother me at all…I’ve even petted it. It’s just something about looking down, seeing that thing slithering that makes me scream. I don’t think we even have snakes that bite around here. (In NY- if anyone knows any different, don’t tell me, OK?) They just give me the heebie jeebies for the whole day.
An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; A pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.
Dang, look what happens when your computer wigs out. I apologize for the above post. Anyway, I like snakes; used to play with garter snakes when I was little, and I like to hold those big scary ones people always want to drape on your shoulders. So, no phobias, right? The other day I was admiring some highly poisonous snakes at Busch Gardens, when something brushed my leg. I swear, I yelped in mortal fear and leaped back a foot. As I said, I think snakes are neat…but there’s some visceral fear there that will hit you hard!
My mom will drop a book or magazine if she comes on a PICTURE of a snake!
Was mowing once when we lived in the country. Picked up a smallish pile of branches and twigs along with a nest of snakes. Small green ones, kinda cute, but I screamed and ran inside anyway.
I hate crickets more – esp. in the house – you can hear the little f***er but as soon as you get up and try to find him he’ll get all quiet. Till you’re trying to sleep. There’s one right now – can’t tell if he’s in the living room or on the porch.
And they make such a mess when you squish them.
And maggots – one is kinda cute, but a bunch of them are just too yucky.
Snakes frighten me. Maybe a better word is “startle”… I consider any snake poisonous until I find out otherwise. I don’t have a problem per se with non-poisonous snakes, but I don’t like to suddenly come upon them unaware, poisonous or not.
I almost stepped on a rattlesnake on my patio a couple of years ago before I saw it. It was dark at the time, and I’m really glad that my instinctive reaction wasn’t to try to pick it up.
I love snakes. I don’t have the stomach to feed them, so I can’t have them as pets, but they are beautiful. I used to have a corn snake for a little while. I gave it to my biology teacher to keep though, as he had other snakes for it to make friends with and he fed them and stuff. I’d take out around with me to my classes, inside my shirt. Sometimes I took it home for weekends. His name was Egor and he was so sweet… and very pretty. Corn snakes, aka red rat snakes, are red and orange and look like a tapestry.
I’ve always liked snakes and still think they are beautiful creatures. I hate that they are so maligned, as most are harmless and all are beneficial. They eat rodents, for one thing. I came across a large copperhead on a trail not long ago. It did startle me a little, but I stayed a safe distance and just watched it a while. Leave them alone and they will leave you alone.
Please, please don’t kill snakes! Many are becoming threatened species. For that matter, don’t just kill something (anything) just because you are ignorant about it.
P.S. I like spiders, too. I guess I like the unfairly hated species. I do not like fleas, ticks, flies, or cockroaches. They are true pests.
I can’t imagine anyone being frightened by Thika (my wife’s 10 inch Kenyan Sand Boa), but we have had visitors who didn’t want to be in the same room as her tank. She is very quiet and is not at all nervous or hostile. (Of course, I have never understood why anyone would want a Kenyan Sand Boa: they spend 98% of their lives buried up to the nostrils in sand. They are only active at night, and “active” means they “swim” through the sand where you can’t see them. host “Wanna see our snake?” visitor “Sure.” h"There she is." v"But it’s just a vivarium tank filled with sand." h"I know, isn’t she neat?")
I understand why (some) folks don’t want to get too near Shango (the 24 inch Ball Python), but he is actually calmer and friendlier than Thika. He will loop a few inches of himself around my wrist and then start exploring the surrounding space. He sheds hard and we have to help him once in a while, but if we start about six inches behind his head and work toward it, by the time we are touching his head he won’t even flinch.
I do understand why people are not keen on feeding snakes. We had started by buying only frozen mice (they don’t fight back, reducing the chance of infection in the snake), but one month both of our snakes went on hunger strikes that only ended when we gave them live food. Debbie soon discovered that live food was expensive, so we began raising our own. (The trick is to not name them, no matter how cute they seem.)
I will occasionally find a garter snake (not garder or gardner–they are named for their apparent resemblance to old-fashioned garters to hold up stockings) when I’m mowing. I always make it a point to move it back to the meadow where I don’t mow (after showing it to Deb, of course).
While no snake is slimy (they are generally dry and firm–a very pleasant texture), the garter snakes do have an odor reminiscent of aging fish–probably because they are in moist clay and dewy grass. The only “problem” I have with garter snakes is that they are so afraid of me that they are liable to wriggle out of my hands and fall to the ground while I try to move them out of the way of the mower. I hate to think of them dislocating a disk in the fall.
Spiders are also neat critters. Most summers we get a jumping spider nesting in the mailbox. She doesn’t bother the mail and we don’t bother her. (It is, of course, a new spider each summer.)
He turned many snake-fearers into at least snake-apathetics with his cool demeanor.