A hiker on Mount Tom was taken to a local hospital after being bitten by a venomous snake. Read more: http://www.wcvb.com/news/local/cent...om/-/11983998/16622780/-/15q2gt5/-/index.html
People often forget there are poisonous snakes in New England. At least he was able to id the snake that bit him.
My son and I caught a diamond back rattler in Napa CA area years ago. (it was small and we used long sticks) We were hiking in the Blue Hills area (Mh A) maybe three years ago and saw a timber rattler. Seeing one is almost as rare as hitting the lottery. It was going across our path, away from us. It is a pretty sizeable snake for these parts and they do avoid confrontation. (diamondbacks do not) We told the staff at the visitor center and they took us behind the scenes and showed us a couple of timber rattlers and a copperhead they have in captivity. It was pretty cool. Where I am from in VA, copperheads were pretty common to see, and they too can get pretty big.
Growing up, my neighbor killed a Diamondback rattler with a shovel. We live in a town adjacent to Hansom Field and it hitched a ride on a plane from Texas. There were a few of them that got loose.
Oh crumb, I totally forgot about the poisonous snakes that live up on that mountain!! I have been seriously considering becoming a volunteer up there (when my schedule clears up in a few months) and I was inspired to volunteer after reading about the Mount Tom Advocacy Group: http://www.networkingfriends.net/graphics/mt.tom.pdf. Trouble is, I am deathly afraid of snakes -- poisonous or not -- and I would just die if I saw one up there. I used to run into rattle snakes out west when mountain biking, and last I heard, the National Forest Service rangers are still cleaning up the bodies of the hundreds of thousands of little birds who died when I shrieked. I suppose I could limit my volunteering to the winter months. Decisions, decisions. . .
When I was at MP School at Fort McClellan, we were on a field exercise, and some of us were following one of the drill sergeants out to a range. All of a sudden, he jumped right, just as a copperhead went to strike.....it missed him by inches. That certainly made us look where we were stepping.
I used to literally catch rattlesnakes for a living in California. Like, daily. I actually wanted to be a herpetologist when I was a kid. Growing up I spent every day after school outside catching lizards, snakes, scorpions, spiders and anything else I found. My professional snake training was conducted by the reptile staff at the San Diego Zoo and you won't likely find a bigger, more diverse collection of venomous snakes in captivity. For training, they pissed off some very large and several smaller rattlesnakes (Mojave, southern pacific, and diamondback) and then made us wrangle those fuckers. I loved every second of it. Believe it or not, in the field, most of them went without a fight or a strike and only after they were caught did most of them rattle. If anyone has a snake problem, hit me up, I still have my snake hook and tongs.
It's still possible to catch that dream in most major cities. Seriously though, that's pretty cool. I know my daughter is going to do some kind of work with animals. She's obsessed with them. 6 years old, and got a hold of a garden snake in my tomatoes. She wore the damn thing as a necklace all day
I was fishing a couple weeks ago and spotted this Eastern Water Snake. I snatched his ass up and made him pose for pics. Theyre very common around ponds and bogs here in Mass. They get fat from snacking on the endless supply of frogs. You'll notice the gloves because while they can bite and draw blood, they're not venomous, however as a defense mechanism, they will shit all over you and it reeks like you wouldn't believe. You do not want it on you!
I found that out from simply picking up a garter snake to show my kids. He was decent sized, probably from munching all the crickets in my garden area. He wrapped himself around my forearm, shit and pissed on my arm, then bit me with his tiny needle teeth. After I was done letting the kiddos look at him and the pups wanting to get a piece of him, I let him go and had to literally bleach my arm so the smell would go away.
Yep. Releasing their anal glands (shitting) is a defense mechanism common to many non-venomous reptiles because they can't inject you with poison. It's also common for some species of non-venomous snakes to mimic rattlesnakes by coiling and rapidly shaking their tails against leaves or rocks to simulate the rattle. Natural prey of rattlesnakes are programmed to be scared of the rattle sound.
