Better Check Your Shorts

[AJGUNNER]

My brother was down to New Mexico last week and sent these pics after a visit to the Petroglyph National Monument outside Albuquerque.

This would get your attention!!!

Now have another look at the position.

 

[jack]

Yup .... shorts to the washing machine for sure! :mrgreen:

 

[737tdi]

Sorry but I love snakes. I would take a couple of steps back and let that pretty girl go on her way. No fear about any rattlers except the little pygmy rattlers. They won't kill you if bitten but make you sick as hell. I fear cottonmouths much more then that beauty. Cottonmouths will get after you. She won't.

Karl

 

[Rick Courtright]

Sorry but I love snakes.

Hi,

Yup, love 'em too: a nice plump one like that on the barbie with some Cajun spices is a treat!

And before we start another episode of "snake wars," no, I don't actively hunt them. But if one's trying to eat me first, well, all bets are off! Depending on where those steps are--like maybe abandoned?--I might follow Karl's advice, But if I came out of the house and started down those same steps to be greeted by that one, 'specially if there are kids or curious animals around... sorry!

Rick C

 

[Pistolero]

Park visitors walk those steps daily and many of them wearing flip-flops and shorts, I don't hear of too many getting bit. Most of the ERs here in NM ( no man's land ) usually keep a good supply of CroFab on board just in case.

 

[coach]

Not used to poisonous snakes where I live, but a cobra in the U.S. Would get my attention.
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0905-snake-20140905-story.html

 

[gramps]

I watch where I put my hands and feet. Poisonous snakes around my domicile are going to die. If encountered out hiking, I take pictures and enjoy my time in their environment. The rattler pictured is indeed pretty. The place where it is, makes a case for a walking stick to nudge it on its way.
gramps

 

[jgt]

I would not bet my life on pygmy rattlers. There are some on Padre Island, TX that are several times more toxic than coral snakes. The snake wrangler there said the reason most people don't come into contact with them is because they get swarmed with mosquitos when they go into the salt grass. Those that persist are the ones who usually get bitten.

 

[stevemb]

I've caught and relocated a Pygmy rattler from my flower bed. I've killed an eaten a few Timber rattlers found in and around our hunting camp. If found down on the river, back in the woods, likely we'll both live. Salt Marsh 'skeeters now are truly scary !

 

[hesco]

That's why I always wear heavy leather boots and pants, sometimes their hard to see, wife steped on a rattler buried under grass in badlands South Dakota last year, flip flops and shorts, got lucky

 

[bogus bill]

I definitely am not a snake lover. Yeah I have heard the arguments and been rebuked by a few snake lovers. Years ago I had a deputy friend show me some pictures he had taken from a call he had. This hiker had leaned against some rocks where a timber rattler was sitting. It got him right in the middle of the back between his shoulder blades. It looked like someone hit him with a axe, you could see the backbone etc. The blood boiled under the skin. He was deader than a doornail. I have shot at least 3 or 4 that was in my path. Once I was walking up near a creek near a watering hole to pick up my daughter and her baby sitter. I almost stepped on a large rattler. At the same time her little Pomeranian was running towards me to greet me. I shot the snake figuering it would no doubt bite the little dog that for sure would have tried biting or play with it. I caught hell both from my daughter, her baby sitter plus some dudes that were walking towards the swimming hole. I would do it again too. Another time a friend and I were hiking and he almost stepped on one he didnt see but I did. I yelled for him to freeze and shot it. Another time I was riding motorcycle and pulled up to a popular drinking fountain from a spring at a turn out. There was a large rattler coiled up alongside the fountain with people in the area and more turning off to get a drink. I shot that one too and all three of those incidents were in California. A few years ago here in Utah my wife and I were riding our ATV on a trail. I pulled over for some reason right neat a high embankment. My wife screeched for me to take off fast. I couldnt figure why and what the problem was for a few seconds untill she boxed my ears to go as she was speechless. I had pulled right alongside one sitting about shoulder high to us on a rock. That one I was too slow fumbling for my gun to get, it found a hole in some brush and rock. Back in 1960 I was working for the National Park Service. I and my partner was walking along a creek. I was in front. He yelled "Rattler!" Even with him pointing at it I till couldnt see it for a few seconds and I had stepped right over it. Rules be dammed, that one bought it! Somewhere I have a picture of it with me holding the hide tacked to a board. It was close to 4 1/2 or 5 ft long. The boys fried it up and I had just one bite just to say I ate a rattler. You can love them my share. I will kill every one I get a chance at. Last year I and the wife were driving in a remote area. We seen a eagle swoop down near a creek, come up holding a large snake, get some altitude and then it dropped it high over some rocks to kill it! I would have liked to video that scene!

 

[RugerHound]

Yeah, that's where they'll hang out now & again. I hear of a handful of people getting hit each year around these parts when they step outside their door in the morning. Out here in the desert, a fella gets used to looking down a lot! Along with wearing thick and high boots. I relocate a few each year...

A couple weeks ago one of our kitties got hit... She got really tore up. Lost a lot of tissue on her left front leg and shoulder. The strike looked fairly small... But man, what a bunch of damage. Never did find the snake, but it's cost me about $700.00 so far. :? We have 'em get hit now & then, but I've never seen tissue loss like this before. Heck, sometimes they don't even need to go to the vet. (I take 'em anyway, but sometimes there just isn't anything to do)

Whatever got Geri sure was potent...

 

[Don Lovel]

Having just done Rattlesnake ID on the green rattler Molly almost stepped on in gardner Colorado, that is a SW Prairie Rattler by the color and markings

I will throw in a great recipe for "the other white meat"

good sized rattler skinned and chopped into sections, put in a pot full of water and boil, then it is easy to pull meat off the bones, rib & vertebrae make nice craft supplies,
chop up meat and put back in stock, add a can of chicken stock, some onions and diced potatoes, a big can of sweet corn and some diced green chilies, and some heavy cream or half n half

seriously great tasting clam chowder and the rattler meat is kinda chewy like clams.
If the snake that scared Molly had been fatter (and not nixed getting cooked by scaring the hell out of her) I would have made a batch.

 

[Rick Courtright]

Whatever got Geri sure was potent...

Hi,

I'm sure the kitty's size, along with the site of the bite, played a lot into the amount of damage:

I knew a vet 20-some years ago who'd come out here from IL and bought a local animal hospital practice. He said they didn't have rattlesnakes where he came from, and the first time he saw a rattler's bite here, he was surprised at how rapid and complete the necrosis was. A dog had been hit in the face, right where the amount of blood circulation is possibly the highest in the animal's whole body. Add that the dog's owner was out in the desert, and it was an hour or better before he got to the vet. Doc lost that one. It took some study with a couple of local vets, and laying in a serious stock of anti-venin, but he saved the next one, and a few after.

At the human end of the spectrum, years ago I worked for a woman who'd been hit in the foot. It took a long time to recover, as in months, and 30 plus years later, she said her foot still "wasn't right." When that toxin goes to work, it does its job pretty well!

Hope Geri makes it and can have a fairly normal life, too.

Rick C

 

[WIL TERRY]

JUST BEAUTIFUL, and one of GOD's most noble gifts to the world of targets.

And so it goes...