Had a pipe with a pit viper - No, not your ex wife...

[rmbittner]

"Man, I would be looking for a new place to smoke!!!"
A new place to smoke? I'd be looking for a new place to live!!
Don't see anything but garter snakes around here. . . maybe four in 20 years. (But one was, inexplicably, in our kitchen!) That's enough for me, snake-wise.
Bob

 

[rockymtnsmoker]

At the very least, thinking you might want to ditch the flip-flops for something with a little more coverage. Like the thigh-high lace-ups in "kinky Boots", the musical 8O

 

[davidintexas]

About three years ago my wife noticed that our cat was sitting in the other room connected to the living room and just staring with her head cocked up. The other room is a room that was added on before we bought the place and had rough hewn wood for the walls, not drywall. So my wife got up and went in there and turned around after passing the doorway and looked up. Behind and above her on the wall was a 5-foot snake just "sitting" there. Of course she yelled and I hesitantly went in as well. Jeez....why does it fall to the husband to take care of these things? I hate snakes. I know a lot of it is a mental thing, but I hate snakes. So, I call my neighbor over and while he's holding a pillow cover up close to the snake, I knock it off the wall with a hoe into the cover and to the outside we go. Still don't know what kind it was. It may have been just a chicken snake but we have a pond at the back of the property so it could very well have been a cotton mouth. It did have a triangular looking head. Ever since, everytime I walk through that doorway I always do it quickly and immediately look up to see if we have another visitor. Don't know if I'll ever get over that

 

[mso489]

Anyone ever heard of pipe smoke drawing snakes or any other kind of creature? My father spent summers

as a child in rural Michigan, near Holton, which was dairy and is now mostly Christmas trees. He claimed

it was common wisdom that playing a harmonica drew snakes. At the zoo, I once brought in their herd of

elk playing the harmonica. I wonder if pipe smoke has any effect. Snakes smell/taste the air with those forked

tongues, and I wonder if the pipe smoke was an attractant? Incidentally, the elk really like harmonica music;

first I had five or six, but the herd/crowd grew to about twenty or thirty, and I felt like I was holding an elk

Woodstock.

 

[instymp]

+1 Winton, same here & grew up in south Fl too. Lots of days in the Glades.

 

[winton]

OK, here is a story about a 7 foot rattlesnake. This is the next town south of where I grew up.
http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2009-10-01/story/huge_rattlesnake_found_near_st_augustine

 

[instymp]

Talked to a customer yesterday that had a friend kill an 11 ftr, eastern. Saw a pix of a 12" + in the early 1900s that 4 guys had to hold for the photo. But a 7 footer will most likely knock you on your ass.

Regardless, little cut bugger would be in snake heaven.

 

[ravkesef]

ssjones; south american species if indeed "jararaca"....
I know in Ontario we only have one poisonous snake and that's the Massassauga rattler which is only found around Georgian Bay/L. Huron...they too are tiny like this

Let me tell you, they hang around in Orillia too.

 

[virginiacob]

Yep, they're nasty critters! Around my area we have mostly non-venomous species such as the black snake, hog-nose, and king snake. But we do have a large number of copperheads and the occasional cottonmouth. I've never run across a cottonmouth myself, but I know my brother killed one and had it identified. I have seen my fair share of copperheads however and they'll definitely make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. They're an odd looking snake as their thick body seems to be out of proportion to their smaller triangular head. They also blend in extremely well with their surroundings and it's no wonder they are the culprit for so many snake bites. We had a local lady a couple years ago who was getting hay out of her barn to feed her horses and a copperhead was apparently coiled up on a hay bale and before she saw it, the snake sprung out and bit her on her arm. I've thought about that every time I go out now to feed my horse and double check around the hay bails before I pick one up.

 

[saltedplug]

Snakes are one of my least favorite things. Aversion to them is high in most cultures; it would seem they are almost universally despised. But they are revered by some, as I recall some Indians would dance around them and use the snakebite to initiate visions. Then there are those Primitive Christians who persist in handling snakes. I heard one was bitten lately and died. Though most probably they would explain this as a defect in his faith, I tend to believe that snakes bite because their fear makes them do so, and because they can inject venom, they fight with their tool, biting.

 

[unadoptedlamp]

Brought the snake into the snake institute today and it's indeed the nasty kind. Apparently they're nocturnal and tend to stick to the bushes. This one will now be set to work.
I was told there's a 3 hour window from the bite to getting rather well acquainted with your mortality. Definitely enough time to finish a bowl before heading out for help.

 

[instymp]

unadoptedlamp, what state do you live in?

 

[rootling]

Had a copperhead that wouldn't leave(not that I was giving him much time)the spring box I was trying to repair when I was living in Virginia. Took me a bit to snag him with a rake to get him out of the box. As soon as he hit the ground he was coming straight for me all ticked off. Well at that time in my life I was working as a land surveyor and had a great relationship with my machete (you have to because you cut and cut and cut). So the rake in my left hand was too long the moment that snake hit the ground leaving my right hand to bring the machete down to split that copperhead's head right down the middle. Talk about getting the adrenalin going, still much the same I prefer Wisconsin and its limited population of legless reptiles.

 

[eastwoodaudio]

Yeah, venomous spiders freak me out quite a bit more than snakes honestly. My old man's friend's wife was bitten by a brown recluse. She didn't know it at the time, thought it was something else, and ended up losing her arm.
Had a buddy in the Tampa area of Florida who was bit by a brown recluse on his stomach, had a good baseball size hole from the decaying flesh. Yuck...

 

[12pups]

Make a cute little tamper. You keep him? Be a novel way to teach newbs about tongue bite.