> Bug barricade
> > Life: The mosquito screens of 150 years ago were made of horsehair.
> > Later, they were made of steel, copper, aluminum and, most recently,
> > Fiberglas. But whatever the material, most people agree that screens
> > make for nice, bug-free summer evenings on porches and in gazebos.
> >
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> Alright, you covered the easy one, now how about snake barricade? >
> [he asks after having been surprised by a 4+ foot long bullsnake in the
> garage this morning. Talk about getting your heart re-started. The
> good news is that it wasn't a rattler. The really, really, scary thing
> is that the garage door has been closed immediately following getting
> home all this week which implies either this critter was inside since
> Sunday or it somehow slithered in despite the door having been closed]
I realize it goes against some peoples instincts, but if you've got black snakes, bull snakes, milk snakes, etc., cherish them! They eat lots of bugs and rodents and are harmless to people.
BTW, blacksnakes (and maybe others) have an antiseptic in their saliva to "sterilize" their prey. I got bit by one once (lots of very short but sharp teeth) and the pinpricks were all gone in about 8 hours.
Did you get in the way of its meal? Thats how I got bit. For some real fun, try handling a 12-15' python. 2 guys(stupid teenagers. Yep, one was me.) can really get tossed around.
I got bit by one once (lots of very short but sharp teeth) and the pinpricks were all gone in about 8 hours.
I was helping out at a state fair university exhibit displaying and explaining native snakes. I was a teenager and it was quite an experience.
Item 1: I was demonstrating a hognose snake to an audience and one of the other helpers was holding a 3-4 foot blacksnake. He dipped the snakes tail in water and then down the back of my neck. I jumped and swiveled around and the startled snake got me right on the nose! My instant reaction was to kill that @#!$% kid, but I made the mistake of looking at the crowd first. They'd all backed up about three feet and had the most horrified looks I've ever seen. I got to laughing so hard I forgot all about killing my compatriot :-).
Item 2: The aforesaid hognose snake. The harmless hognose will swell up like a cobra and strike - with its mouth tightly closed! If that doesn't work it will roll over on its back and play dead - but if you put it on its stomach it will flip back again :-). You can put your finger in its mouth and it will desparately try to get away instead of biting. But some of the local country folks (this was the Kentucky state fair) swear that it's poisonous. I was demonstrating with finger in snakes mouth when the blacksnake got me.
The only problem with Mr Hognose is that he only takes a few days to become tame. Then you have to find another to demonstrate, the tame one just wants to curl up on you and get warm :-).
Item 3: We had a tank with rattlers and copperheads in it and one of the university students would demonstrate milking them for their venom. One of the rattlers had grown two new fangs, but one of the old ones hadn't fallen out yet. The demonstrator carefully hooked the two new fangs over the lip of the collection jar - and drove the old fang right into his thumb! When we finished laughing at him he had to go to the hospital overnight for observation, but there was little or no venom left in the old fang.
All in all, about the most interesting job I've ever had :-). A shame it was only for a week.
I had a small (8-10 feet IIRC) try to wrap me up once. I started unwrapping from the tail end while it wrapped from the other. One frustrated snake :-). But I'm glad he wasn't bigger.
I understand Lake Havasu, AR, is having a year for rattlers so they might be interested in the barrier. My sister who moved there from western NY several years ago has been trying with some success to grow some green stuff in the back yard. After spending the day working closely with it she had a visit from the neighbor on one side who said she found a 2' long rattler while she was doing the laundry in the garage. She also said the neighbor on the other side found a 5' rattler in his back yard (which sounds suspiciously large and was probably an exaggeration). But they are right on the edge of the desert at the outskirts of town. She has a road runner that follows her when she walks and occasionally a coyote.
Can't imagine how many people down here (southeastern Kentucky) swear it is poisonous -- it's known as a "blowing viper'. They jump 20 feet to get to you too.
My room mate found one of these on the road and stopped to play with it. Then he tossed it in the truck of the car. His girlfriend, whose car it was, was very unhappy about it. She was even less happy when they got back to campus and he couldn't find the snake in the trunk. For some reason I was included in the tirade she went into. I'm not sure why. I wasn't with them, I just happened to wander by. On the other, his ancestors didn't have anything to do with the snake either but she sure brought them into picture. Anyway, we dismantled that car and never did find the snake. Frankly, I wasn't all that interested in finding it but I wasn't interested in crossing his girlfriend either considering the amount of trouble I was in already and all I had done was room with her boyfriend. Best we could figure it went out a small hole in the trunk. She didn't buy that but really didn't have a lot of choice considering how completely we took the car apart. Of course, she didn't consider the dashboard even though I had. Never heard from the snake again.
That's where I meant. We don't have that style of rattler here so 5' is very large for us. I guess occasionally some of our eastern diamond backs get that large but I don't think I've ever run across them. Just the occasional timber rattler and very few of those. And I'm used to exaggeration among people who find snakes, especially when they find them where they figure they don't belong. Although since they built their house on the snake's habitat I kind of wonder why they are surprised by that.
Thanks, that was hilarious. [I'm afraid I was a bit more lethal than a BBQ fork-- If it slithers into the house (garage is attached), it's not ever coming back]
That's all well and good, but given that I live in an area in which rattlesnakes are common (have had 6 at my place in the past 4 years) and given the fact I have a small child (age 7 now, was 3 when we moved here), the idea of being complacent regarding the presence of snakes in or near the house is not a chance I want to take. I don't want to have anyone in my family have to spend precious seconds "classifying" a snake that it runs across and in so doing, be bitten by a rattler because they were used to one of the "good" snakes being around. I've got 4 1/2 acres of desert, if the snakes stay away from the buildings, I'm not going to bother them, if they come into or around the buildings, all bets are off.
I've learned to think like you. I generally didn't bother them even those I've found around the house when I lived in the city. But when I moved to the country, that changed. First of all, too many (killed 25 a year for a couple of years). And the one black snake that took a strike at me as I reached for the saw had a quick and messy death. Second, the poisonous ones -- not many but occasionally. There's the very memorable two very large copperheads a couple of hours apart 8 feet from the house and under the same a bush SWMBO was pulling dead leaves from.
Away from the house and immediate area I don't bother any but around my place (which has been here for 50+ years) they die.
A copperhead, apart from being too lazy to bite in a lot of cases, isn't all that poisonous. I had a neighbor who's dog and kid (both about 50 pounds) got bitten. The dog (and maybe the kid) got multiple bites. The dog had attacked a group of them sunning on a flat rock and the kid went to its rescue. Both were sick, but both survived.
OTOH, there's a "false cottonmouth" that is non-poisonous but has such a dirty mouth that you WILL get blood poisoning if bitten.
And every once in a while one of our snake handling churches has someone bitten by a copperhead and die. Most don't die from a bite from any poisonous snake but they do get sick. And they don't always inject poison. I don't take chances with them and I kill the non-poisonous as well.
SWMBO just informed me our neighbor went to get into bed last night and found a black snake on the pillow.
Many years ago, I wrote an article on NA venomous snakes. The copperhead was noted as one of the most aggressive, with a truly virulent necrotic (tissue destroying) poison by the expert I talked to at the time. I might let a rattler slither, but ever since then, I've done in every copperhead I met. Blacksnakes don't bother me unless they mess with one of my birdhouses, at which point they tend to lose their heads if I'm nearby.
Charlie Self
Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child. Dan Quayle
Interesting. I just did a google. Three different sites said the snake was reclusive, most bites were when someone stepped on one, and bites were seldom, if ever, fatal.
I guess you can find an expert on any side of an issue :-).
From personal experience, I can tell you we found one in the schoolyard when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. Several of us handled it (not knowingit was venomous) and finally put it in a glass jar and into a desk drawer (remember the old school desks with drawers under the seat?). When the teacher inspected our desks and found it, she had a fit. But she wouldn't touch it, we were told to take it out and kill it! We took it out and turned it loose - it hadn't bothered us, why should we hurt it?
Yes, but...as I recall, this guy said nothing about the fatality. He was talking about tissue destruction around the bite, stating that the copperhead was about the worst. As for aggressiveness and reclusiveness, I'd almost bet that too much handling is gonna piss any snake off, which may be where he got his idea of the snake's eprsonality--he milked rattlers for the venom and put on a snake show, in the Pocono honeymoon resort area for newlyweds.
I always figured I could find something else to do on my honeymoons.
Charlie Self
Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child. Dan Quayle
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