It pays to keep your eyes open and your wits about you out there, folks.

Last week I almost placed my hand down right in front of Mr. Slither over there on the left, but I hesitated a moment to have a look around first. I was a good 4 hours on 4WD roads away from any kind of medical attention.

Good heavens, Sotto. Gives me the heebie-jeebies just to look at that pic and imagine being in that situation so far from help.

Maybe it was intuition that kept your hand away.

Whatever it was - luck, sixth sense or an angel on your shoulder - good to hear you avoided harm.

Or maybe it was evolution. Good for you.

Way to hesitate. I always read that climbing on rock and such was the "classic" way of getting bit, but that proves it! Glad you avoided it - even if not fatal, it would have been miserable to get you treated.

My DGF, btw, shuddered and had a mini-spaz just reading this post. She's a snake-a-phobe.

good job of finding some good survival food. Where were you. that looks like an enteresting cave. food and shelter in the same spot WOW.

Word of the Day: Herpetophobic

Use it sometime today. Most will think it is an aversion to a particular family of diseases.

Sotto: Glad you made it out puncture-free.

another reason i like living in the Frozen North!!!

Beautiful picture! I worry less about snakes than two legged animals, but I have some bias because I've been around snakes all my life. There is evidence that many strikes at humans are "dry bites" and not full loads of venom:
http://www.whmentors.org/saf/snakes.html

We came upon this one while we were hiking in NJ two years ago:


It was pretty calm (on a fairly cool day) and was sitting in the middle of the trail. I was wearing my hiking sandals! I am very aware of where I step. We took our pictures and it never moved.

This one was on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia at the site of the October 1978 Navy fighter jet crash into Bald Knob:

He was considerably more tweaked.

At any rate, they worry me much less than other dangers like falling (which I believe is the #1 cause of backcountry accidents).

- Andy

Those are what's best know as Targets of Opportunity" here in Texas.

AKA: LUNCH!

We find a lot of snakes in the radio and electrical cabinets of cell sites. Imagine opening a large refrigerator size cabinet to find one's self eye-to-eye with one of those critters... Happens about twice a month.

Good situational awareness.

Desperado, I did that once up in Walla Walla County. I was at a remote repeater site and in the process of opening an old GE cabinet. Since it was a half height cabinet, I was squatted down and as I turned the key and opened the front door, a bull snake struck at me from within.

After I got my heart started again, I turned him into a greasy spot on the concrete floor. Normally I like bull snakes and enjoy having them around, but I had to do something to drain the adrenalin outta my system, and besides he started it.

Ran into these 2 on my honeymoon just a couple weeks ago. How often do you suppose someone stumbles upon mating rattlesnakes in the wild?




After they noticed me. That's both of them rearing up to look, still tangled together!

Y'know, if I caught you taking pictures while I was doing that, I'd probably strike out at you too!

Those pictures are just amazing though. Very cool.

Nosy

Remember when I was "Sentenced to Austin"?

Opened the cabinet, and there he was. Walked back to the truck for the S/A M6 and there was another one OTW to the truck. I got FOUR at the one site alone. I hate the Killeen/Temple area!

This thread is going to give me nightmares tonight!!!! Snakes just scare the crap out of me!!!!

*now heading off to the liquor cabinet for a hard drink of scotch*

We used to find bits and pieces of snakes in the radiator cowlings of diesel generators up at transmitter sites. I think they like to curl up in the engine since the block heater keeps them warm. Great place until the weekly gentest..

Pretty kitty! Why kitty buzzing? Too much caffeine?

My last rattler encounter was on a steep mountain trail. It wasn't hiking so much as climbing using hands and feet at that point.

My head came level with a granite shelf that had an occupant, eye level and way too close.

I believe I tapped the Force and teleported about five feet back.

Some of the areas I work and tend to are infested with serpents (mostly cottonmouth water moccasins with a healthy number of copperheads in the mix). The cottonmouths are particularly irritating because they mostly stand their ground. Generally I just go around them or wait them out. I've also found that even when cottonmouths are ready to strike, usually they don't unless you actually get very close to them or touch them. I cannot tell you the number of times someone has stepped within an inch of a cottonmough and not been struck. I do not and will not allow my crews to hurt them. My thought is that if you let them live, maybe someday they'll let you live. However, we do sometimes paint them with tree marking paint going in so that we can better see them on the way out. You can smell cottonmouths, and that distinctive smell is one way I know to be extra alert on some of the existing trails. Even on colder days I don't lower my guard all that much because they can be out sunning them selves higher up in the taller grass. Don't think your safe just because your looking down while your walking. Be on the lookout for the kinds of things snakes eat, because if you see a lot of that (such as frogs - at least in my area), your going to sooner than later see a lot of vipers. One remote tract of land I tend to is traversed by a bayou named Serpent. I found it is aptly named, in that in a single day you can see over a hundred cottonmouths there. If you stop anywhere while working there and don't see one, look out because you may be standing on it.

"Remember when I was "Sentenced to Austin"? Opened the cabinet, and there he was. Walked back to the truck for the S/A M6 and there was another one OTW to the truck. I got FOUR at the one site alone. I hate the Killeen/Temple area!"

Were there any snakes there?

I need to ask, in the original image are you looking down onto the bitten worm vertically or back at it horizontally, I'm confused by the perspective ?

Oh Yes!

We used to go to a radio repeater site in Washington called Chandler butte, out near Prosser. A couple hundred yards or so from the shack was a broke down ditch full of boulders. In one spot the boulders had bridged, leaving a pit-like area underneath. We reckon all the Pacific rattlers in the area must migrate there in the winter to hibernate, and again to mate. Anyways, Pacific rattlers are pretty mild mannered compared to other types of pit vipers, so they were relativerly easy to harvest into a burlap sack. We brought the sackfull back to the main shop and told the others. When they didn't believe us, we brought the sack in and sat it in the middle of the main room. My buddy nudged the bag with his foot, and when it started squirming around, the girls started squealing and ran off. We took the bag to a local vet who would milk the venom for medical purposes etc.

I wouldn't mess around with other rattlers, and we were darned careful handling the ones we caught. Luckily I was with a guy who'd been doing it most of his life.

I prefer snakes to spiders. I've never had a snake go across my face in the middle of the night, or climb over my hand while I am climbing an antenna tower, or hitch a ride in my dog's mouth with it's little legs sticking out the sides flailing around.

While I have had my share of close encounters, usually I haven't had a camera along. In the one below I did as we were doing some desert survival field exercises for purposes of shooting photos for a project. As it happened, we ended up the exercise one afternoon at the Verde River (yes, we do have a few running rivers through our Arizona desert) where we discovered this fellow. We were walking along in line when all of a sudden the guy in front started running backwards at warp speed and it quickly became obvious why. He damn near stepped on him. He's a lot more obvious in the photos than he was in real life just slithering along, before he coiled and started rattling.

From the past descriptions of the Killeen area, it sounds like there were a lot of snakes... some with legs, some without.

Yup

Sotto,
Where was this photo taken?

The pic was taken up on a mountain top in the San Bernadino Mountains of SoCal.

Actually, a little of both. Although the picture doesn't show that there was some overhang to the rock above the coiled rattler.