Look, honey, a ...snake!

[Leigh Costello]

Okay, I live in the sticks with cats and dogs and a horse and assorted wildlife. Have done so since 1972 when my folks thought juvie hall was our next step as developing pranksters in a subdivision that bordered Lambert Field in StL. So after decades of curious finds you would think I would know not to dig in a pile of leaves without poking or kicking abit.

Apparantly, being 40-something means my brain was elsewhere. Hubby was using the log splitter to split the last of a load of wood and I was helping-with one arm. The wood had been stacked large in one pile and ready-to-go in another. Then my college-age nephews came over one day and helped by piliing it all in one pile. So to get to the needs splitting stuff, I had to move the little stuff and re-stack.

Anyway, near the end of the mixed pile were some freshly fallen and windblown leaves. As I worked, I just shuffled my feet and figured anything living there would get the hint and move. Ha! I reached down to pick up a stick and fling it away. No problem. Then I looked down and dang if there wasn't another one! So I picked it up, and it moved and then I moved very quickly-while not releasing the "stick."

My brain said "oh a blacksnake." My reflexes said "throw that sucker." My hand said "not happening just yet." So I did a version of a Madonna dance waving the snake and knocking wood everywhere. Then, finally, I let the snake fly. After a post-snake-grab jig, I carried a piece of wood to hubby.

I asked if he saw the snake. He said he hadn't, but he thought I had my MP3 player on and the dance I did was pretty weird. I dropped the wood near the splitter and retreated to watching him work.

Just another day in paradise.

[Sonny Edmonds]

.... but I am!
I bet the snake was just as surprised.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Leigh....I can imagine you got your cardio-vascular workout for the day!

I with 3 other guys were moving hay from the field to the barn. I was on top stacking. This friend who stood about 5'3" was on the ground. Once the tiers on the truck got over 3 high, Larry had to use a weight lifting "press" motion to move the bale up to his chest and then using his legs and arms throw the bales up there. One day he pressed a bale up to his chest, and there staring him in the face was a very angry snake who'd made it through the baler alive. I was on top the load. Larry had been having trouble getting those bales up that high. That one cleared my head in the air!

[Neal Clayton]

snakes i can do, spiders on the other hand i hate. but i dunno about this one, here's a picture from my mom, they live out in the country as well. it's like a where's waldo pic...focus on the bottom left for the huge copperhead .

[Kyle Kraft]

Wow! No mortal man could devise a better camo job than that!

I don't appreciate "surprise!" snakes. Or spiders for that matter. If I know they're there ahead of time...fine. Surprises me no likey.

[Bruce Page]

snakes i can do, spiders on the other hand i hate. but i dunno about this one, here's a picture from my mom, they live out in the country as well. it's like a where's waldo pic...focus on the bottom left for the huge copperhead .

I think I see it..
Wow, that's amazing!

[Neal Clayton]

Wow! No mortal man could devise a better camo job than that!

I don't appreciate "surprise!" snakes. Or spiders for that matter. If I know they're there ahead of time...fine. Surprises me no likey.

yup, that's why we don't like em. we only have two poisonous snakes around here, water moccassins and those. water moccassins are speedy in the water but otherwise not that much of a threat, since they're not very aggressive on land and easy to see.

lots of folks tend to step on those copperheads and get bit by them though, for that reason. never know it's there until you walk right over one, and they're ambush predators, they'll lay in a pile of leaves like that all day long, and won't run if something comes near them.

[Gene O. Carpenter]

When a Copperhead is laying on natural ground cover you won't see it unless it moves and even then you still might not see it.
When I was a kid running thru the woods back in Ky, I remember being told that when alarmed Copperheads give off an odor of fresh sliced Cucumbers, but I can't say for sure that they do or do not cause I was running too fast and when I came to a felled tree I made sure one foot hit the log and I landed 4-5ft away from it's edge..Would have been beyond the striking range of any serpent laying underneath it..

[John Dykes]

hmmm - don't see it.

Guess it's a good thing this Kentucky Boy moved to Colorado!

- jbd in Denver (thankfully)

[Ed Breen]

A month ago I found a clutch of snake eggs near the barn, took a pen knife to one to show my grandson a sanke eggs insides and darn if a little ellow came ripping out. We moved the entire clutch to the kitchen figuring it was coming on winter and they would all be too skinny to hibernate. Well they all hatched and my grandson claimed six while we said seven. The other day it turned nice and warm for a week and we put them back in the dirt by the barn. This morning I found one of them in front of my closet. He's back in the box on the counter while we wait for warmer weather. Think they are black snakes.
Ed

[Stephen Beckham]

Try looking straight across the middle - maybe you can pick him out...

Of course - it is hard seeing these things while in full-reverse or all out in the opposite direction...



Now go back and look at the original and you'll see him a bit easier...

[John Dykes]

Gah!

Wonder I never got bit....

- jbd

[Dennis Peacock]

Leigh and Ken....both very funny stories.

I grew up around water moccasins.jpg and I remember one summer I killed 27 of them that were hanging around my fishin' hole at the creek. The other snakes we had while I was growing up were copperheads and Black Racers. Snakes I respect and will pick them up and move them as long as they are not poisonous. Spiders I HATE!!!!!

I remember picking up a little bitty snake when I was stationed in Italy. A buddy of mine and I were walking around in the bomb dump along a dirt road, I saw the snake, stopped and picked it up. Showing it to my buddy the Italian State Police stopped by and asked what we were doing. I showed them the snake (big mistake)....AFTER they calmed down..they "ordered" me to put the snake DOWN......I did and they told me to NEVER pick up another snake like that one again. It was a Viper...their most deadly snake in that area.

Move along soldier....move along.

[Greg Cole]

We just hauled a 4' black snake out of the building I work in a couple weeks ago. He was perched on a bench top like a fake rubber snake, and we all started making jokes about who the dipstick was bringing in a rubber snake.... til the mouth opened and the tongue came out.
I don't mind critters, so long as I know what they are. I had a spider bite on my right knee 2 years ago that required a trip to the ER, fluid drainage, swelling out the wazoo... and stiffness that lasted a couple months. I never used to harm spiders, now I squash every one I can. Better to strike first if ya ask me.

[Gene O. Carpenter]

It's easier to see in the photo above than the 1st one. Look in the center for a narrow slightly curved line of X's in 3 colors, going toward the upper left. It's hard to see even when you know it's there.

The only snake, that I know of, in the US that will coil to a striking stance and open it's mouth is the Cotton mouth and they have a black body, at least the ones I saw back in central Ky, SE Va, below Norfolk, down into NC. Their color may vary in other areas.
When I was about 11 yrs old (1947) we were living in Broadcreek Village, on outskirts of Norfolk Va. and one day our gang was playing war in a large drainage ditch that had eroded even larger than original. The dirt was hard packed and we would dig little holes into the sides to store or grenades (dirt clods) in them...
I had scraped out a hand sized hole about 8" deep when I broke thru into another smaller opening. I motioned (yelled) for my buddies to come over to look at my find.

Mistakenly we decided to enlarge and dig deeper.

We had the excavation to about 14" dia. X 12" deep and one of the other guy's was taking his turn when he suddenly jumped up saying "something just hit his finger"!
We were all standing back about 4' looking into the hole and out of the small tunnel we were following crawled 7-8 little snakes, about 8" long, all were reared up about 3" with their mouths wide open.
I don't know what species of snake they were but they ended up dead! We dirt clotted them in their little cave and didn't go to that side of the ditch anymore.

We weren't afraid of snakes in general, we had a couple greenies in our shirt pockets all the time. We just thought that anything that showed his tonsils like that had to be pizzen.

I always wanted a heavy bodied snake so about about 20 years ago I bought myself a 2ft Colombian Red Tailed Boa and I walked into the house with "Jake" wrapped around my neck and said "look Honey, a snake"!

These Yankee gal's don't seem too fond of those long slithery things!

I had Jake for about 2 years total and he grew to about 5-1/2', 4" dia., was a beautiful colored fella with a Zorro mask along side his face. I took him along whenever I went browsing flee markets( they didn't allow dogs), and he seemed to enjoy the outings as much as I did!
He did bite me on occasion but since they are tree dwellers that descend toward the ground in seek of prey, it was my fault for bringing my hand up from below him when he was laying on his hot rock or tree limb.
He saw movement below, associated it with food so zap!
But he realized my hand wasn't a mouse so he didn't hold and coil around like he would a rodent.
I would saturate a cotton pad with Hydrogen Peroxide and apply it to the tiny little elongated puncture's..
My wife finally caused his demise but it was unintended....So she say's!
Gene