I love snakes. I would have one as a pet except that I couldn’t handle feeding it (hey, I used to have pet rats, too!)
Shortly after we moved into our townhouse I went outside to check the mail and found a 5’ black snake sunning itself near the mailboxes. I know how “society at large” tends to feel about snakes and I saw a shovel beheading in the poor guy’s future if he stayed there. So I picked him up and carried him to the woods.
Ok, not directly to the woods. I held him and played with him for about 15 minutes first, I confess. But he was so cuuuuuute!!!
Your story reminds me of a late afternoon on State Road when I spotted a big snapping turtle going the wrong way. I knew he’d get spushed so I hit the blue lights to stop traffic and grabbed him and put him off the highway heading back towards the Delaware River. Mr. Turtle wasn’t interested in play-big snappers have long necks!
Once upon a time, I was walking in the local Mtn’s with Mother. We had her dog with us and were having a nice time going up the trail. This trail was perhaps 3 feet wide. Mom was walking first, then dog, then me. All was going well, when i look where I’m about to step next, and see a Large Rattler. I back up (rather quickly) :eek: Seems both mom and dog had walked right over this thing and I was going to be next. He was a slow moving bugger about 5-6 feet long. I stopped, asked mom to grab dog ( a fearless little Welsh terrier) and pointed out to mom what was there in the middle of the trail. All went well. Mr. Snakey moved on at a leaserly pace. We went a little farther up the trail, but it just didn’t seem as much “fun” as before.
When I was a little kid, I picked up a tiny garter snake, and brought it to my mom, saying “string go ‘thhh!’ at me!” She encouraged me to let the displeased “string” go. Far away from her.
When my husband was little, during one trip to see relatives who lived near the Mississippi River, he was bit by a snake but didn’t tell his parents right away. Then he started not feeling so well, and confessed to what happened. His mom took him to a doctor, who got the story out of him - he’d been bitten by a cottonmouth. He was all right, just didn’t feel well at all for a few days or something.
I think I’ve told this story on the boards before, but of course that’s not gonna stop me from wasting more electrons now.
My summer job when I was in high school and college was being a tour guide at a set of caverns near my hometown. The caverns were locked at night with two heavy wooden sliding doors. The guide leading the first tour of the morning would unlock the doors.
A friend of mine had first-tour duty one day late in spring. She unlocked the doors and pushed one aside. When she did, a four-foot-long snake that had been sunning itself on the little ledge above the doors rolled off, landed on her shoulders, coiled once around her neck to gather itself, then slithered down her arm and leg to the ground before crawling away.
My friend stood there for probably two minutes, looking at her tour (eight or ten people), eyes wide, face white. She kept asking “Was that a snake? Was that a snake?” She wasn’t particularly afraid of snakes, but she certainly didn’t expect to be a jungle-gym for one first thing in the morning.
Tetanus for sure. When I was in high school (sometime in the last century) I was in gym class, running laps and lagging, as usual, behind the pack. Suddenly there was a snake about two feet long right where all those other boys had trod. It was just a gopher snake, and, naturally, I tried to pick it up. It did not want to be picked up. It had no doubt been stepped on already by one or more of my faster fellows, and it was pissed. It struck at me. Twice. After the second time I decided to leave it alone and started back to the gym with one other slow comrade.
As we were walking back my friend said, “Hey, Gott, look at your arm!” I looked, and saw two little trickles of blood, and then two more. The snake had hit me both times, but his little teeth (they’re not “fangs” in a gopher snake) were so tiny I hadn’t even felt them.
I went to the nurse’s office and was told I’d have to have a tetanus shot. I didn’t mind the snake biting me, but I wasn’t happy about that anti-tetanus needle.
Lets’ see, last weekend I came across two black racers on different parts of the same canal. They sure can get across the water fast when you’re chasing them and trying to pick them up.
A few months ago, I found a baby snake about the size of an earthworm. Black with an orange ring on the neck. Very cool. Last I saw of it, a neighbor was taking it inside to show the wife.
I used to own an albino Burmese Python. Very cool snake and the only one that ever bit me. It was my fault though. I was about to feed it and was taking the water dish out so it wouldn’t spill. I had forgotten to wash my hands which smelled of mouse and so when my pinky was right in front of him, SNAP!
I also had a speckled kingsnake that would sometime escape his cage when he wanted to shed and would curl up in a boot in my closet to do so. He actually liked it when I helped him shed and would wriggle and wiggle his way out of it while I held the old skin.
I did have a close encounter with a water mocassin that almost got me. That would have been really bad since I was in the Fakahatchee Preserve a long way from my car which itself was a long way from civilization.
One of my aunts is deathly afraid of snakes. I haven’t seen her react to a snake in years, but when she does, it’s the turn white, start shaking and/or screaming, remove yourself from the situation NOW NOW NOW kind of reaction.
So.
One day, maybe 20 years ago or so, her oldest son (who was probably around 10 or so when this happened) was walking home from school when he noticed that his shoe was untied. He bent down to re-tie it, and it broke. He wasn’t too far from home at the time, so he just picked up the broken lace and walked the rest of the way home.
He didn’t have a house key (his mom was a stay-at-home mom at the time), so he knocked on the back door for his mom to let him in. She opened the door, saw him standing there with the shoelace in his hand, and slammed the door in his face!
She thought the shoelace was a snake, you see.
Cracked me the hell up. He was pretty stunned too.
I was walking to work, and was right at the edge of campus. I nearly stepped on it - there was this li’l old snake, just lying there, blending in perfectly with the crack in the sidewalk. I don’t know what it was - about 18 inches long, brown, kinda bland looking. It was not, thankfully, a rattlesnake. I stood there for a minute watching him, and then he slithered off into the brush. He was kinda cute.
I like snakes. They’re cool. 'Specially desert snakes - they’ve got life right. They just sorta lie around, basking in the sun…good life, man. It’s a good life.
