Snakes are awesome. I don’t find them scary at all. I’d enjoy having a pet snake except for their eating habits.
Snakes are awesome. I love snakes. I always wanted to have one as a pet.
But this,
Gahh noooo! :eek: Kill it with fire!
Pfff…screw that. Snakes are overrated for rodent control. Get yourself a good owl box.
This 100%. If theyever come up with a Purina Snake Chow I’ll have one in a heartbeat!
That probably would be widely approved of in my neighborhood. I also want to put up a bat shelter.
Snakes – all snakes – are evil, and should be killed on sight.
Remember that reptiles ruled the earth for a couple hundred million years, while humans have only been around 1.5-2 million years. They are the major competitors to our species, and the competition isn’t over yet.
Kill 'em all.
I second that. My dad was born in the Sudan where his parents were working as missionaries, and he was taught that when he saw a snake to freeze wherever he was and to scream his head off. Pretty much all snakes over there are harmful. I picked up my deathly fear of snakes growing up in the US, watching him do his snake terror dance when mowing the lawn. To this day I am still freaked silly about all snakes, to the point where if I see a bunny rabbit move out of the corner of my eye I will do the terror dance thinking it is a snake.
And speaking of acquired fears, my wife is deathly afraid of pigeons because her nanny used to taunt her with them as a young child. So my wife and I make a great duo. Imagine the two of us walking down the sidewalk on a peaceful summer day. She will see a pigeon on the ground and start shrieking. Hearing her shriek, I immediately assume there’s a snake. Then we take turns jumping into each other’s arms, like something out of Scooby Doo!
Thanks for sharing Endemic, that is classic. 
I saw a python* swimming in a canal near Shark Valley which is a part of the Everglades. There’s never an alligator around when you want one.
*It looked like a python and it was very large; I didn’t care to leave my car to try to identify the damn thing. Actually I don’t know if pythons swim although I suspect they do.
I think you’re just kidding, but this attitude is really pretty awful. Snakes have as much right to life as you do. I hope you don’t influence any children. I also hope you don’t actually kill any snakes.
My first reaction on seeing a snake is to get close enough to see what kind it is. The other day I was on the trail and I didn’t have to get too close–the rattler was holding its tail up in a way so that the rattles caught the sunlight and seemed to be glowing. Very cool.
I must have missed that gene. I have always been fascinated by snakes and even as a wee girl wanted to catch them and hold them and keep them. Maybe it’s growing up in Ontario knowing that the only venomous ones are rattlers, so if it’s not making noise, its not going to kill me.
My Mother is not fond of snakes. Not phobic, but definitely does not want anything to do with them. I guess she would have preferred a little less interest on my part.
Snakes I have no fear of (when I was a kid I used to chase and eventually catch Garter Snakes by hand, until I discovered their defense mechanism - which was to poo extremely stinky crap on you, if they can’t get a bite into you).
But I can’t pick up a Dock Spider (or Fishing Spider). We have those at the cottage as well - big suckers, mostly harmless.
Never been afraid of snakes and I encounter them on a regular basis when camping, hiking, and hunting. There are plenty of rattlers where I hunt, so you have to be alert to your surroundings.
I can attest to the power of instinct, though. Once when we arrived at our hunting camp, I went over to the electrical box to flip the switch to power the water pump. When I lifted the cover on the box, which was at about eye-level on a pole, I was faced with about a hundred yellow jackets who were quite displeased with my intrusion. I didn’t have time to make any conscious decision to turn and run, because before I knew what was happening I was already 30 feet away and still gaining speed. It was like somebody else with lightning-quick reflexes had taken over my body. A strange feeling.
I have milk snakes living in the foundation of my house and in the spring, I’ll open the bulkhead to get to the cellar and will often find them stretched out in the warmth under the hot metal doors. I usually give a bit of a jump when I first notice them – then I go get the camera.
Last spring, I was weeding the perennial garden near the foundation and actually grabbed a large milk snake that had curled up in a ball in the grass. We were both pretty startled and he slithered off in a tiff.
They’re good neighbors – keep the crickets and (hopefully the mice) down to a reasonable number.
I have a terrible, TERRIBLE snake phobia – so bad I generally can’t look at pictures. But I don’t want to kill them. Just…make them go away. Toss 'em in the woods, run screaming, etc. But unless they’re actually harming someone, don’t kill them.
(And my parents aren’t generally afraid of snakes. My grandmother was, but she didn’t freak out. So…it had nothing to do with picking up on someone’s behavior)
What’s the big deal with the spider? It’s not scaly and slithery. Spiders are cool. Snakes on the other hand…Personally, I blame Conan Doyle for my phobia. Either that or it’s a Freudian thing.
Count me in with those who missed the primal snake-fearing gene. I mean, I know intellectually not to fuck with them, but when I see one my gut reaction is “Cool!”*
*OK, that’s assuming that the snake is just hanging out at a safe distance. If I saw something like a king cobra standing up with its hood flared out, hissing and actively threatening me, then I might be just a little scared. Of course that’s never happened.