So as not to Hijack another thread.

[SEC=UGA]

This past 4th of July I had one of the more uncomfortable experiences of my life. We were at a 4th of July party at my wife's aunts house. I get a call from her brother telling me I needed to come over to his house as my dog had escaped from him and ran off into the swamp, this was at about 5:00 in the evening. My dog Roscoe, a basset hound, may as well be a member of the family, so I hoped in the car and hauled ass over to his place. I immediately found out that he had been spooked by the slamming of metal door behind him and that he bolted... I knew that wsn't good because when he gets frightened he will not come to anybody. So I set out into the sawp at about 5:20 in the afternoon.

 

Thank god it was a relatively dry year last year so the swamp was more of a marsh, I can see in the mud where he had been running, he was going in circles, big circles that overlaped, kinda looked like the olympic rings to me, if you had of been about 600 feet in the air.

 

Since he was running in circles I was unable to track him well.

 

So about 7:00 I went back to the house to see if he had gone back, nope, so I went back in the swamp. By now my wife and her dad had come by to help and were staked out along the roadway, hwy 82, to make sure he didn't run into the road. Finally I hear my FIL yelling that he sees him, so I go in that direction, but Roscoe had run back into the swamp. It's getting dark....

 

I go back to the house to grab a flashlight, when I'm about to enter back into the swamp I find myself about 3 feet away from the biggest freaking water Moccasin I have ever seen. He was only about 4 feet long but was as big around as my upper arm, now, I'm not a big guy, but this thing was freaking thick (I'm guessing 12 to 13 inches around). It turned around and looked at me, and I went the other way. With great trepidation I went back in that swamp, but could only mange to stay out for another 15 minutes or so, mainly because it was damn near dark and the moccasins there are black, I just knew I was going to step on one and quite frankly that scared the diaper dirt out of me.

 

I was about 20 feet from the edge of the swamp when my wife called my cell and told me Roscoe had come home, just as some neighbors were setting of some fireworks... I had to wash that son of a bitch 4 times to get the mud off of him.

 

Any fun snake stories?

[NAUgrad]

you'll have to ask my wife!!!

[SEC=UGA]

you'll have to ask my wife!!!

 

She said that I have the biggest snake she's seen... oh and she needs you to pick up some groceries on the way home.

[bpwallace49]

Why didnt you "draw down" on the snake? I am VERY disappointed in you.

[Big John]

A couple of them:

 

http://forums.thehuddle.com/index.php?s=&a...t&p=3029608

http://forums.thehuddle.com/index.php?showtopic=286215

[Scooby]

my uncle got bit by a rattlesnake in January several yrs ago checking power lines for his job, well with Texas you can get all 4 seasons in 1 week! also he was allergic to anti-venom so he had to ride out the storm

[SEC=UGA]

Why didnt you "draw down" on the snake? I am VERY disappointed in you.

 

Well, I was unprepared and left my pistola in my unlocked car where any child that wanted to could grab it outta the console and wreak havoc with it.

 

That and I probably wouldn't have shot it even if I had the gun on me. Not a big fan of killing ANY animals these days, hell I even have a tough time killing fish I catch and can no longer even bird hunt.

[SEC=UGA]

my uncle got bit by a rattlesnake in January several yrs ago checking power lines for his job, well with Texas you can get all 4 seasons in 1 week! also he was allergic to anti-venom so he had to ride out the storm

 

That would really suck.

[twiley]

Tiny little garter snake got into the house on Monday and my wife flipped out. I caught him and tossed him out.

 

Sorry, that's all I got.

[Jimmy Neutron]

I came across a small rattler once when looking for my golf ball in some rough. Scared me so bad I beat the dang thing in the snake burger with whatever iron I was carring at the time. That scene must have looked hysterical from a distance.

 

I like to go places snakes hang out, so I usually carry a pistol with a chambered load of snake shot.

[DMD]

Back in the day, me and a friend got on our bikes and fishing rods and rode out to a pond we were told had been stocked. It was actually two ponds with a dam of sorts running through the middle. As we were fishing with worms and bobbers, we could see snakes cutting across the bigger pond literally every few minutes. Not catching anything, I decided to go over to the other side and walked down the trail between the two ponds. It had tall grass on either side and I was on the watchout for anytthing coiled since I was just wearing shorts and had nothing but a fishing rod on me.

 

I ended up stopping suddenly when I realized that what I thought was a black hose stretching across the trail was really a water moccasin heading for the other pond. No exageration - six feet long and at least six inches wide. I yelled for my friend to come over and by the time he got there, it had its head and tail sticking out either end of a patch of water lillies that were now out of the water that had to be around six feet across. When it hit the water, it sounded like someone threw in a 50 lb. bag of rocks.

 

That snake was huge. Had we anything like a gun with us, we would have been in the newspaper for sure. We told the guy who told us about the pond and he said "you saw the monster snake, huh? Me too".

 

We were denied need to know information about that pond.

[bpwallace49]

The first time I went golfing in Arizona I was at a place called Desert Mountain. The member I was a guest of warned me to always take a club with me if my ball was in the rough (Rough in Arizona= wild desert) and tap it on the ground in front of me as I went for my ball. When asked why, he said it was to scare away the rattlesnakes with the ground vibrations.

 

On another hole I see a TON of balls in a small ravine and start to go down to get them (because golf balls tend to stick IN cacti, and it is damn near impossible to get them out . . just a fun fact) and I was running low. My host yelled for me to stop and said that is where quite a few rattlesnakes tend to hand out, hence why no member (or employee) is dumb enough to go down there looking for a gently used Pro V . . .

 

I think I lost over a dozen balls that day . . . . .

[Sugar Magnolia]

I had pet snakes as a kid so neighbors always called me if a snake was in their house or yard to remove it. There was a five foot black rat snake in the basement of a house a block or so away. I came to the rescue. Black rats are quite aggressive and are constrictors. This snake was only about 4-5 inches shorter than I was. I grabbed him and he wrapped his body around my leg really tight.. It freaked me out and I let my hand go from around his neck. He crawled up my body until his face was face to face with mine and he bit me right on the tip of the nose I was probably around 14 or 15 years old.

 

When I was 12 years old and at camp, I saw a copperhead on the trail near all of the platform tents The camp was in TN. I went to one of the counselors to tell them to have the campers avoid that trail. They went running down the trail with shovels to kill it, and I was running ahead of them to save the poor copperhead's life. Copperheads are very docile and the only reason it was dangerous is it was right at dusk and someone might accidently step on him. The copperhead was gone and none of us found him.

 

The funniest was about 10 years ago. I was an outdoor sales rep and us reps were setting up our tents for an outdoor show in a park in No. Cal (Del Valle Park in Livermore for those of you from The Bay). Keep in mind I was the only woman rep in the entire venue. Some guy screamed SNAKE. I ran over to find it was a gopher snake. I was trying to get rid of gophers in my yard so I reached down in the tall grass and grabbed him and placed him in a sleeping bag storage sack until I got home. Everyone was pretty impressed about my lack of fear. On the way home, I stopped at a retail account of mine and left the snake in my car with my dog. I came out to find the snake found a way out of the sack and was coiled ready to strike my dog, who was oblvious. I went HOLY SHEET I caught a rattlesnake (western diamond rattlesnakes and gopher snakes have similar markings). The grass was tall and I never got a really good look at the snake. I pulled my dog out of the van, and ran into the retail store (Doms Outdoor Store in Livermore) and calmly asked that I needed help getting a rattlesnake out of the car. A paramedic in training came to my rescue. He opened the van door and found the snake was indeed a gopher snake. I had no idea they could coil and actually flip their tail like a rattlesnake as a natural defense. I didn't take the time to actually look to see if it really had coils--just wanted to get my dog out. I did let the snake go in my yard but my other dog, the hunter, killed it in a couple of weeks--she also finished off the gophers too.

[Sugar Magnolia]

Thought of one more. I was pet sitting for a friend in the Sac. foothills and rattlesnakes are all over the place in that area. He had already killed quite a few that summer and he was worried about his dogs getting bit. He wanted me to shoot them if I saw any. He asked if I had ever shot a pistol and I said no. He tried to show me how and kept screaming at me about safety, and I was holding it wrong, and I could kill myself, and he was quite intimidating. My hand started to shake just as I was about to shoot it for practic,e and he grabbed the pistol from me and said, you're better off just hitting the dang snakes over the head with a shovel.

[JoJoTheWebToedBoy]

I usually have to deal with 3-4 a year in the yard..... My favorite was a couple of years ago. My daughter and her husband had sold their house (on short notice) and she was expecting any day. So they moved in with us until the baby was born, and then went house hunting.

 

Anyways, the plan was when the time came, my job was to watch the granddaughter while my wife went to the hospital with them. So one Sunday afternoon I get the call. Need to get home daughter is in labor. Well, this was at the end of July, monsoon season in Arizona. So while they were gone we had a big one blow thru, and that usually drives he Tarantulas out of their holes and into the open.

 

So they were gone about 5 hours, turns out it was a false alarm. So as they are coming up the walk, my daughter was pointing out the tarantulas to my wife because she is deathly afraid of spiders. As the get a few feet from the door, the rattlesnake (looked to be around 4 ft) that had decided to take refuge from the storm by getting comfy on my welcome mat lit up with a very loud rattle.

 

The daughter yelled snake and started backing up, and my wife flung herself over this small fence like structure that creates a courtyard in the front of the house (a little over knee high) and lands face first in the gravel. Poor girl was brused for days. When I came out (thru the gargage, I looked at the two of them and asked "Where's Jeremy?" (daughters husband). they pointed and halfway down the block there he stood, over-nite bag still in his hand. Apparently, he bolted at the word snake leaving the wife and mother-n-law behind in the dust.

 

Later that night, my wife looked at me and said.....

 

you know, I don't remember diving over the wall, I think Jeremy knocked me over the wall during his get-a-way..... I laughed for days.....

Edited April 18, 2010 by JoJoTheWebToedBoy