I was busy Friday night so the Wifey set out for a walk on her own. A few minutes later she was back. “There’s a snake on the road!” It was about a block from our house. (We live out in the country on a gravel road) I grabbed the closest thing I could find, a broom and went down the road and there it was, curled up in the middle. Yep, a rattle snake about 3 feet long. I whacked it a few times & brought it home & shared it with the Wifey. Not impressed!
We used to walk the ditches & pick up beer cans & rubbish until we realized there were Rattle Snakes out here. Now it’s down the middle of the road. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve actually killed… Anyone else have have to deal with Rattle Snakes or other venomous snakes? Cheers!!!
That’s a good one. I would have BBQ’d of course but in this case it was just “Show & Tell”, hanging over the broom handle. I doubt she’ll ever touch that broom again. In fact she did say. “You’re going to buy a new broom, right?” Cheers!!!
I used to live in Central Florida. There are poisonous snakes there on 6’ centers. There are no snakes here in Hawaii. That has taken some getting used to. Even after nearly 15 years of hiking in the boonies here, I still get the heebie-jeebies walking through tall grass and bush. Old experiences hang on.
I had a coworker who is American Indian. We were talking about snakes when I lived in Florida. I told him every time i lifted something up, moved something in the yard, went fishing from a lake or river bank I would run into a poisonous snake (water moccasins are meaner than tiger spit). My coworker asked me what I did when I encountered a snake. I told him I killed every one I could. He said that that was the problem. He said the snakes know who I am and were taking my aggression personally. He told me that snakes were there first and I was the intruder. He told me if I left the snakes alone when I encountered them, and let them go on their way unharmed, they would leave me alone too. I would see fewer snakes if I let them be.
So I tried it and it worked. It took a while, but I definetly saw a decline in snake encounters (even before I moved to Hawaii).
We live in the country in southeast New Mexico and there are plenty of big fat rattlers around, but we’ve never found one at our house in the 20 years we’ve lived here. We do have plenty of king snakes and bull snakes so they must keep the nasty ones away. When we had horses there was a huge fat bull snake that lived in our hay barn. After a few times of him scaring the crap out of us we got used to him, even my daughter didn’t mind stepping over him.
I have an employee who lives a couple of miles from us who has lots of problems with rattlesnakes in his yard, and he has 2 little kids.
There might be some Western Rattlers (Northern Pacific Rattlesnakes) in your area Denny, but probably not too many. In Washington they’re more common east of the Cascades, but I believe they range to the west of the Cascades in OR. Check out this map. http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~titus/herp/oreganus.html
Snakes freak me out, and it’s things like this that make me glad I live somewhere with limited snakes. Over here we have two varieties, one of which is venomous but not seriously so and not that common(Adder).
My wife is deathly afraid of snakes. I can’t even utter the word. I get a chuckle every year when I find some snakes in my garden. She won’t go in the garden after that.
We have copperheads and water moccasins on the East Coast…but not in my garden Thank God.
Here in southern Iowa we have a couple breeds of rattlers. A friend sent me pictures of a 5’ Diamond Back he shot on his acreage last year. I asked him if he was going to eat it and he looked at me with a horror on his face the likes I’ve not seen often. I guess it’s an acquired taste.
Generally we leave them alone and they leave us alone.
A while back, when I was a young potato, I investigated venomous snakes and snakebites. I was just starting to get into backpacking and other backcountry activities, and wanted to be prepared. I found this USFS report on snakes, snakebites, and readiness. A few key factors were:
Most snakebites (from US snakes) are dangerous but not fall-over-dead deadly.
Poison sucking, from a venom extractor or by mouth is pretty much worthless.
The vast majority of snakebite victims are male with elevated blood-alcohol levels
It’s that last bullet that’s most telling. The report actually had the phrase “drunken male yahooism” in it as a reason why that statistic might exist. If I were going to lie with statistics, I’d say that snakes like drunk people. But for truth, it probably helps support Punatic’s point: most snakes (not all) aren’t all that interested in biting people, provided you leave them alone.
here in FL we’ve got bunches of snakes. including all kinds of non-native species that people have let go and have ‘gone native’ here. I’m sure you’ve all seen web pics of the exploding python that ate the alligator. more of the craziness that is FL. at least they’re all edible.
Thank God.