American Snakes

[azwildcat96]

Anyone with personal snake or shark stories?

I have plenty of snake stories! Most start with a violent buzzing sound, and end with me jumping out of my skin. I usually stumble across at least a half dozen every bird hunting season, mostly western diamondbacks, but occasionally a green mojave rattler. Yes it is legal to hunt them in Arizona (except for 4 rare/protected species), and I do harvest them when the opportunity is there. I tan the skins, and the meat is quite good! Hmmmm...maybe a rattlesnake skin sporran will come my way in the future.

[Woodsman]

My advice would be to purchase a field guide to north american snakes. They offer brief species accounts and excellent identification photos and drawings. Dismiss the myths and tall tales and folklore. The more you educate yourself the less fearful these fascinating creatures become. I would recommend classic guide such as: A Field Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians of Eastern & Central North America (Peterson Field Guide series); Reptiles of North America: A Guide to Field Identification (Golden Field Guide) or The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles and Amphibians by John Behler. Every home library should have at least one of these. For more specific accounts there are excellent regional guides published by leading authorities from universities well known for herpetological research. Here in the northeast this upcoming rainy weekend presents an excellent opportunity to get out and see spotted and marbled salamanders, wood frogs and other species. Ah ... another sign of Spring.

[BoldHighlander]

While we have plenty of rattlers in Eastern Washington, it seems they don't do well on the west side of the cascade mountains (we don't have them). Once in a blue moon one will hitch a ride over buried in a hay truck, or in a pile of lumber (a few years ago a guy reaching into a pile of 2x4s got a surprise when a rattler jumped out & bit him in the face! )

When I lived just north of Los Angeles you'd hear the hill behind the house "buzzing" all day from the snakes. I use to sun bathe out in the yard, I wasn't to worried, I knew the dogs would let me know if a snake came into the yard. I did enjoy watching the road runners go hunting up there

When I was at Ft Benning (Georgia) we always had to check the rifle pits out at the rifle range before getting down in them for snakes, spiders, & rats....never saw any, but we did have more than one instance with fire ants.

[gordontaos]

I was snorkeling and spear fishing one day at Subic Bay in the Philippines. I went down between two rocks to spear a fish, missed, and surfaced to reload. As I was reloading I saw a shark, at least as big as me, swim between the two rocks where I had just been. I set a speed record swimming right up onto the beach. It was probably 6 years before i went in the water again.

While in Thailand I was a dog handler and spent the night sneaking around the jungle looking for bad guys. One night, while in extremely thick jungle grass, my dog stopped, but did not alert. I slowly made my way up to my dogs head but could see nothing. By the way, I had learned some time earlier to always trust my dog, but thats another story. I flipped on my flashlight for a split second and saw that my dog had stopped because of a stream with steep banks. However, there were also two banded kraits swimming upstream in the water. That was scary enough. The scarier part was that I still had a lot more jungle to work my way through.

Lots more Thailand stories of cobras, pythons, kraits, vipers, and bad guys, but its time to go to bed.

[Lachlan09]

Let’s hear your snake and shark stories please !

The only snakes I’ve seen out and about were when I lived in Indonesia and the Philippines. In both countries, I sometimes used to see these long brown snakes on the roads. Mostly they were in the middle of the road, usually with tyre-treads indented across their backs, looking decidedly dead. The Indonesian/Filipino equivalent of Britain’s long-suffering road-crossing hedgehogs !

The only other snake I saw was while living in Bandar Lampung, Sumatera. My family used to visit the Sheraton Hotel pool to relax at the weekends and meet up with other families of our small expat community. One day, I was splashing around in the pool and there were various people in the pool too. I dived underwater and heard these muffled yells. When I popped up, people were getting out the pool asap and I was soon almost on my own. My wife was shouting and gesturing at the far end of the free-form pool for me to get out. What was going on ? Meanwhile, everyone was looking toward a palm tree near the pool’s edge near me. I looked in the same direction to see a lovely bright green snake working its way down the tree. I was fascinated by its beautiful vibrant green colour. My wife was screaming at me to get out, so reluctantly I did. I forgot the incident for many years until the internet age. I was browsing a webpage on Indonesian snakes when suddenly, I saw my snake !!! Beautiful rich green. Then I read about it. It was a Blue Temple Viper. It is apparently very poisonous and its venom is haemotoxic. Victims die of blood poisoning basically, if treatment is not soon forthcoming. Apparently Sumatera did not have much supply of antidote to hand. No wonder everyone dived out of the pool !!!

Beautiful snake though.

[Lallans]

I don't have any really interesting snake stories, although I was apparently fond of picking them up to play with when I was a toddler- but I did want to get in the vital Canadian facts that Black Rat Snakes of remarkable size are found in Southern Ontario, as are, much more rarely, Timber Rattlesnakes. Due to a tendency to disappear over the horizon when encountering them, I cannot testify as to the size of the rattlers.