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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
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I think my hubby right near died of fear two years ago while walking in the woods with me. I saw a garter snake and I wanted to pick it up to show it to him (he's city folk.)
I wasn't quick enough so I got it round the middle. Well the little bugger turned around and bit me. It doesn't really hurt and it's more surprising than anything. My hubby though, was in a fright, he was insisting on slicing my finger open and sucking out the venom. It took heavy duty convincing to make him understand that garter snakes are *not poisonous. He watched me all weekend.
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This particular research program is known as "growing up a redneck." One day in particular, I was walking up this creek in Taylorsville, KY. 'They' called it a river, but it looked a bit puny to deserve such a title. They had damned up the river to form a new lake. We were walking straight up the middle of the creek and snatching water snakes and I think it was garters out of the water. The garters (or whatever they were) didn't bite and were just trying to get away, but the water snakes were ferocious (not that I blamed them). They'd latch on and try to rip - repeatedly. My buddies and I had fistfulls of the squiggly boogers and they were not happy at being manhandled. Most were about 2 - 2.5 feet long. For days later, we each had little brown-red, scabby marks all over our arms. Hundreds of 'em.
One of my buddies was a herpetologist, otherwise we would have been more careful. We let 'em go at the end - all except one garter I kept for a few years. I called him sneaky and fed him worms. He was fat and happy when I let him go. He was pretty small at first. I don't recall, maybe 8 or 9 inches. When he would eat a worm, he'd roll over on his side like he needed an alka-selzer.
On this particular trip, I was already in college. But we have been creek walkers nearly as far back as I can remember. Usually, we would just go for crawdads or fish or what have you. Sometimes we'd try to make damns in the creek ourselves, or build a fort inside a briar patch, or any number of other stupid and sometimes dangerous activities. Sometimes it was just to see who could pee the farthest. There are a lot of ways to keep yourself amused in the woods.
One time in Alaska, my brother found a human foot in the woods, which I promptly wrapped up and took in to school for a teacher to look at. He called the MPs and the CID showed up and wanted to know where I got it. I wasn't that familiar with the particular area and I refused to tell them at first, because I thought their heavy-handed ways might scare the crap out of my little brother. I told 'em eventually after they toned it down a little and he took 'em out to where he found it. No idea how it turned out.
Ah, yeah ... research. I guess that's as good a name as any for it. I should have thought to get an NSF grant.
k
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I just remembered that the innocuous snakes were not garters, but queens.
(Except the one that I kept which really was a garter snake.)
k
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Hey! I've been to Taylorsville Lake!  Good fishing. One time my then-next door neighbor invited my hubby to go out in the small boat with him for some night fishing. Well, there was a great amount of beer, and no fish, and my husband is one of those lucky ducks who can fall asleep anywhere. Our tipsy neighbor did something he shouldn't have in that tipsy boat, and my husband woke up underwater. No damage, just the loss of some equipment including the cooler. You picked up a human foot??? Ew-ww-ww-ww...! And yes, mercy, you have to show law enforcement where such things are--preferably without disturbing it (I know you were young at the time, Sweetie).
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Hey! I've been to Taylorsville Lake!
It's a fine place for fishing, or at least it used to be. No idea what it's like now. On the great snake adventure, there were three of us: Steve "Snake" S., Shawn R., and myself. We were a pretty strange lot, I guess. Shawn was maybe the weirdest, a tall, lanky, very strange fellow. His dad was Jesse Stuart's biographer (and editor for at least one volume of JS's short stories, I think). Shawn was a really strange guy with an uncanny sense of direction and judgement for distance. He took pictures of the lake all through the process of them tearing down the towns, though the building of the dam, and flooding. He later made a slide show and then a video he called "Death of a Valley, Birth of a Lake" or something like that, which he set to Vangelis music. It seems a pretty emotional piece to me, but I was out with him when he took some of those pictures.
As for the foot, I'm pretty sure I was in eighth grade when J found it. Probably about 14. No excuse for bringing it in, really, except I wasn't thinking clearly. There was only a little bit of meat and tendon left on it.
k
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Joined: Jun 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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When my Daddy was courting my Mama, he needed a lot Hi, WO'N of gas money. Seems he had a client that paid him good money for snakes. Well, they did meet at the Oddfellows Club. My Mama always said he was an odd fellow, indeed! 
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People will still pay for snakes. They make great pets. Easy to care for, for the most part. Not sure how true that is for the tropical buggers. I'm not too thrilled about the really big ones, but anything nonpoisonous under 5 or 6 feet is okay.
It's amazing, isn't it, that some people we think are initially so odd can turn out to be so important to us?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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My hubby though, was in a fright, he was insisting on slicing my finger open and sucking out the venom. It took heavy duty convincing to make him understand that garter snakes are *not poisonous. He watched me all weekend.
ROTF, Bel. My god - on what planet was your husband born?
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on what planet was your husband born?
Lots of people don't know one kind of snake from another. I can only recognize a very few. From having spent so much times in the woods, I should know a lot more than I do, except that I had such a bad attitude about the whole thing. But especially at a distance, I often can't discern species when my dad and brothers can tell easily.
Seems kinda odd that a garter snake would even bite. I've only seen one do that once before - when it was seriously hurt. I can imagine, though, that they might get testy when they're shedding, at which time it might be slightly more difficult to tell what it is.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Depends on the type of garter snake, FF. Eastern garters - the most common species around Michigan - can be variably (depending on the individual snake) tempermental and one very well could be bitten handling them. Northern ribbon snakes are similiarly variable in temper but rarely bite. Butler's garters are very gentle and rarely attempt to bite.
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