Year of the Snakes...

[jdmidwest]

Starting backwards from this weekend.

Camped at North Fork River Recreation Area Sat.  Trying out my new Roof Top Tent system with my Grandson along.  Just heated my long round steak to nice  perfection and placed it on a bun with trimmings, sat down next to fire and started to eat.  Halfway thru, pop on my bare left leg above the ankle.  I looked down to see copperhead in strike pose at my feet, bailed out, hot dog flew into fire.  Went over to truck, I was feeling some burning on my leg, but flashlight did not reveal any marks.  Back to snake, he looked funny, lower jaw displaced.  Quick rap on back of head made him spit a crawler Cicada out of his mouth.  He was trying to get it down and was mad about it, struck my leg for some reason.  Grabbed a stick and relocated him to another campsite that was vacant.  Wiped leg off with Dude wipes and head was on swivel all the rest of nite.  Glad my tent was located above ground, slept well.  No ill effects from the strike, bug saved me.

 

Back in June, wife calls, noise in fireplace.  Maybe a bird, I am an hour away.  15 minutes later, another call, more noise, looked like a black tail hanging from under curtain in living room.  Thought she saw a mouse.  I arrived and checked fireplace, doors closed, damper closed, nothing.  But the black tail had me thinking snake and I soon found one by my fly tying table in the corner hanging off a folding chair.  Into a bucket and outside, 5 ' black snake.  Thinking I was done, went back in to clean up the scent drop it did when I shined a light on it and the chairs.  Started moving the chairs, there was another staring at me.  Outside it went also.  Both got a sharp rap on back of heads to clear their memory banks so they could not find they way back and returned to the wild.  Pair of  blacksnakes crawled up to roof, found hole in chimney  screen, balled up in sex, and fell down chimney.  Pushed way around damper and doors and into house.  Chimney has new screen.

2 weeks prior, I was working on the farm.  Wearing gloves and headphones.  It was hot, I was mowing and brush hogging roads.  At some point I remember bending over to pick something up and felt what I thought was a briar stick.  Took off glove, looked at thumb but no sticker and nothing in glove.  But thumb was burning like a thorn.  Shrugged it off, kept on working.  Next morning the thumb was swelled some and all way back to hand, but did not see anything to cause it.  Later that nite after the shower, thumb still bothering me, looked closer under light and found 2 punctures about a small staple apart.  Swelling went down after a week and only damage was dead skin like a big hangnail and cuticle under corner of nail separated from nail.  Dry bite thru glove I am guessing.  Probably a copperhead or ground rattler, pretty small from looks of fang spacing

 

Summer half over.  50 years of outdoor camping and this is the first snake I remember in a campsite and it hit me on the leg.

[fishinwrench]

Good grief !   😳 

I was sitting at the kitchen table the other night, and caught some movement in my perifial vision.  Looked over and almost had a heart attack...... HUGE SPIDER ! Big as a pie plate.  😱

The closest weapon I could find was a St.Croix rod tube, and it took 4 stabs to get him pinned down where I could finish him off with a 12 pack of Diet Coke. 

I'd rather have a house full of Rattlesnakes than to know that SOB was in the house.  

[oneshot 1]

Had a Black Snake on our Washer eating Cookies.

I seen this figured he was very brave.

Caught him walked right by my wife. She didn't see him. 

Later I told her about him.  She says I don't like that. I said I don't either but he didn't eat that many cookies.  LOL 

oneshot 

[jdmidwest]

I can only imagine what would have happened if she was not home and heard the noise in the fireplace.  Finding them without any warning would have been even worse.

[Al Agnew]

 

I've only had one snake adventure so far this year.  I had set up a portable basketball goal on the concrete slab in front of the house.  There's a retaining wall along the edge of the slab, and I wanted to get that goal off the slab, where it was a bit in the way when we back cars out of the garage, so I studied it a bit and decided it could go on top of the retaining wall, lowered to it's lowest setting, and would be about the right height from the slab.  The goal's pole was set on a black plastic tank that you fill with sand and water to make it heavy enough to stabilize the goal.  I grabbed the pole and tilted it so that it went up on wheels set in the back of the tank.  My toes were right up against the front of the tank when I did this.  I rolled it a few feet, then happened to look back at where it had come from, and there was a small copperhead coiled up, looking at me like, "what the heck did you move my hiding place for?"  My feet had to have been within six inches of the snake when I tilted the goal.

Since we moved to this place, I've had copperhead encounters every summer around the house.  When we first bought it, the main door leading into it just had a small concrete slab in front of it.  A copperhead lived under that slab.  We hadn't moved into the house yet, and as we would arrive each day moving stuff into it, the snake would be coiled up in front of the slab.  It would retreat under the slab before I could catch it.  I finally brought my pellet gun one morning, intending to shoot the danged thing before it could slip under the slab.  Of course, it wasn't there, and we didn't see it again until after we'd moved in, built a detached garage adjacent to that door, poured a big slab between the house and the garage, and build a breezeway there.  Then one day I walked out into the garage, and there was a freshly shed snake skin the size that copperhead had been, and freshly shed copperhead skins retain their markings, so it was obviously from a copperhead. So I walked around the garage looking in the corners and under things (fortunately we didn't have much lying on the floor that I had to move).  I finally found it coiled up under an old desk I was using as a fishing tackle workbench.  Not taking any chances, I shot it with the pellet gun.

The second year, I found one up against the foundation.  It got away.  There was a rock pile a few feet away and I knew that's where it lived, so I got the tractor out and dug up that rock pile.  Never found that one, but did find two babies, no more than 8 inches long and as big around as a pencil, yellow-green tails and all, when I was finishing up moving the rocks that fall.

[steve l]

Took the backpack down near Bell Mountain in April. Had the tent etc set-up and was sitting in my little chair when I saw a movement by my foot. Looked down and there was this little feller.  Woo boy did I jump!  He buzzed at me for quite awhile.  Was finally able to nudge him away with a VERY long branch. You can bet I walked very gingerly the rest of the night!

[DADAKOTA]

He'd have buzzed his last.  Then I'd have taken some bourbon to settle my nerves.

[WestCentralFisher]

I hike a lot in a place where timber rattlers are pretty common. FWIW, I've come real close to accidentally stepping on them a few times, and I've not been struck at. Definitely been rattled at, but then that's probably why I didn't actually step on them. 

I view them similarly to black bears. When they're around in any significant numbers, you should take precautions (I always wear my tall leather boots there) but they'll try at least as hard to avoid any aggressive interaction as you will most times. I really think the rattle is a non-aggressive action intended to prevent a situation where a strike is necessary. 

Now, if you have dogs with you, look out. They'll sometimes ignore the rattle and try to catch the snake, and get bitten in the process. And then sometimes you  have to carry your large dog 4 miles out to the truck, call a rural emergency vet, pay a whole lot of money, and your dog will be in a leg cast for awhile. Don't ask me how I know this. 

[tjm]

The few timber rattlers that I've seen in the woods have been rather sluggish and non-aggressive, but I give them the right of way.  Copperheads are  lot more common here with my snakiest year having (IIRC) seven  copperheads and two pairs of rat snakes in and around the house and out buildings in the same week and a few more over the rest of the summer. Mowing about an acre, the riding lawnmower thunked  out a copper head on one round and on the next round hit another one and later that same day there were two copperheads in the feed room when I went to feed the hens. A herd of semi-feral cats seem to have cut back on the snakes since then, at least I see fewer. I detest the cats that the wife feeds but I dislike snakes just as much so it's kinda a trade off. 

Growing up here in the '50s, when a dog got snake bit, usually around the head or neck,  it would swell up huge and the old men would say "that looks like snake bite" and after a  while the dog would get better, I don't recall anyone treating the snake bites or any of the dogs dying from them.

[basska]

Cool topic. Snakes (venemous or not) have always fascinated me and I probably don’t have enough of the natural human repulsion of them (Spiders on the other hand…). I’ve seen Timber Rattlers near KC before. Seen a Copperhead once near Truman Lake. Have yet to see a Cottonmouth and that’s one I really want to encounter on a float trip. It would be cool to see a scientific survey of watersheds that support Cottonmouth. I’ve heard they are pretty much non existent in the Meramec system, but fairly common on the Gasconade, Niangua, Black, and Upper White River systems. I wonder if they are around The Elk?

Another snake of southern Missouri I would love to see is the Pygmy Rattler. Barely a Rattlesnake, and extremely beautiful.