#@%% snakes
I have spent too much time in situations where the time between the snake bite and the time of seeing any kind of medical professional who MIGHT know what to do immediately is far too long a span of time.
Our water district had an employee who has spent his entire life around rattlesnakes get bit while reaching down to lift a meter box lid. His co-worker also had similar life experiences. They knew exactly which hospital to get to and how to position the bite area while in-transit. He was already having convulsions when they arrived. The total medical expense topped $400,000. I saw the invoice. Had he been alone, he might not have made it safely to the ER. BTW, the hospital, which was the primary location for treating snake bites, has been closed for about three years. I do not know which other hospital is now the go-to site.
Shooting snakes at 20 yds is hunting, not self defense.
Some day Alien Terrestrial Surveyors are going to visit our planet and shoot us with lasers... just because.
??? ????
my life plus the welfare of my wife & kids matters WAY more than a snake's - I'll gladly stand by that statement. We had a dam reconstruction project many years ago where the downstream side had a beaver pond that was impounded pretty heavily thanks to the beavers and full of water moccasins. The contractor, who was reworking the slopes (well outside of the wetlands), knew better than to come unprepared and by the end of the week over 2 dozen moccasins were put to rest. I saw several that charged a few of his laborers working along the silt fencing as they're very territorial critters. One of them had to be older/wiser and over 3" in diameter but he remained out of reach but slip up closer to the laborers from time to time. About the only guys who were safe were those in the excavators
In Colombia we had a 22, but it did us no good, as the boy in the front of the canoe froze when he realized that the red eyes glowing on the creek bank (near midnight) were in fact not a caiman, but rather an anaconda....
????????????????
I actually did go snake hunting in a large pine forest in Jacksonville Florida back when I was in the Navy and shot a couple large unknown type snakes. I cut the head off of one and for whatever reason, it sat in the junky bed of my truck in the Florida heat for a while. There was a pizza box over top of it and I moved the pizza but, letting the sun hit that head and I kid you not the head started to move across the truck bed. I was horrified. A snake head slowly moving across the bed like a Ouija board. After a while, I flipped it over with a stick only to see that the underside was completely covered in maggots and they were trying to escape the heat of the sun. I also thought it would be funny to put the rest of that dead snake coiled up around the air cleaner of a Jeep of another guy from my ship while he was on duty. I was right. It was funny.
Well now. the snakes are out here. Yesterday my son saw a large king snake at his grandmothers, and this morning I was walking up the outside steps at her house, only to come face to face with a large copperhead.
