hondainsight-
Where in the Province are you ?
Cheers
Derek
Not exactly...
Sort of like the idiot a few years back that ended up getting eaten by the grizzlies he was "communing" with. Think they got his girlfriend, too.
Good thing he had the camera rolling during the whole incident. I understand the audio is real interesting.
> being married to a lady from Michigan, it has always been impressed on me the fact that there are no poisonous snakes in Michigan.
>
Having grown up in MI, that had always been my impression in spite of Dad's statements to the contrary. Us kids thought that was his way of keeping us from getting into too much trouble when we went camping.
But then when I was 19, I was working with a utility company surveying some preliminary pipeline route between Alpena and Mackinac City. It was early spring when we started, but the weather started warming pretty quickly over the next few weeks.
By the last week or two, we were working in an area of lots of rocky and loamy soil covered with brush of varying density from moderate to impassible, lots of tall grass, and water covering a good deal of it. For anyone familiar with the area, this was a large portion of steel company property where they extracted lime for use in some portion of the smelting of iron ore into steel.
On the first day we saw a snake, it was just a couple hundred feet off the road. It was quickly discerned that the snake was a massassauga rattler (the little rattler beads on the tail were a dead give away), so the rest of the crew comes back and puts on snake chaps. 4 crew members, 3 sets of chaps. They told me that since I was the youngest, I could move faster and therefore had the least need.
We killed 4 in the 1st 1/4 mile and saw dozens over the following week or so ranging in size from about 10" up to a little over 4' (a monster for a massassauga).
MI does indeed have at least one variety of venomous snake, but to my knowledge, although thick in some locations, it is not a very widespread population.
I personally find it discouraging to hear how many snake killers there are in this profession. I have crossed paths with an incredible amount of poisonous snakes here in central FL and have only had to kill maybe 2 because they were in my way and there was no going around them. The other thousand or so, we have gone past each other without so much as a dirty look. I have, recently within the past year, stood within a foot of a pygmy rattler and a moccasin while taking shots, keeping a wary on them of course. Neither bit me nor made any aggressive act to do so. They will not bother you unless you do a handful of things to provoke them, such as stepping on them or trying to pick them up. The demographics of the majority of snakebites are from inebriated men in their 20's ... they don't seem to bite anyone that just walked by. In the instance of someone's relative being bitten by one as he stepped over a log ... Rule #1 ... step ON logs and not OVER them. And don't reach for one, they will bite every time. I have personally known 2 surveyors that have been bitten by moccasins, one was reaching for it and the other stepped on one. If you don't do one of those two things, they will not bite. I've even seen a video of a guy disproving the "moccasins are aggressive" stance, which I know not to be a fair tale as well. The guy did everything he could to provoke being bitten by one he found in the swamp. He put his foot on it, he stepped next to it ... nothing. Not until he reached for it with a fake hand and grabbed it did it bite.
My wife got bit on the hand by a copperhead that was buried in some grass clippings washed up against a lattice panel in the front yard. She never saw the snake. I killed it after it bit her and took it with us to the hospital.
That was about 8 years ago, she writes holding the pen between the first and middle finger because it's the only way she can grip it. She can't make a closed fist. The arthritis in the joints on that hand bothers her worse in cold weather.
She can still grip a hoe handle and she can still pull a trigger. Any snake here is a dead snake.
James
Make sure the machete is sharp! I swung down on one in grass, and man was I surprised when it coiled behind the blade and struggled to pull its head clear as I tried a sawing action to no avail, 18" machete and a 36" pissed off rattler is a scary site, luckily my chain man grabbed the staff and stuck it which allowed me to get back......."we tanned his hide Clyde, and there it is there hanging on the shed!" Tommy Kangaroo down sport. Jp
The neighbor just killed a 42" rattler, which is pretty large for our area. It was within a hundred yards of their house. I love it when they tell you they will not bite unless provoked. I have found that some snakes are very well mannered, others not so much.
Interesting story, I was climbing through some high maple brush, about 4' off the ground. 1' right in front of me at about chest level was a beautiful bright green rattler coiled up rattling. You know what happened next. Then my dad climbed back up there and chopped it into about 4 pieces in one swing.
Saw about 6 more rattlers on that survey. What a place!
JRL
