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Kirby Smart the Snake Killer

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capnfrog

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Aug 17, 2002
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I posted about venomous snakes not climbing trees, I was told this by my snake handling neighbor, he also told me about the color going all the way around so this fact may also not be true. If you see a snake with a white belly, don't pick it up, it may be venomous. non venomous snakes will still bite you. Small snakes are more dangerous than large snakes because larger snakes are more lethargic and a smaller snake will empty all his venom in one bite while a larger one will hold some back for the 2nd bite. (also told to me by my snake handling neighbor). :)
 
C

CullmanTide

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Jan 7, 2008
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WalkaboutSean said:
A few days ago I nearly stepped on this timber rattlesnake. It was lying amidst some bushes in our backyard (right next to the water hose & spigot). I was leaning over to turn on the water, looked down at my feet (wearing flip flops!) and saw this thing literally inches away. First rattlesnake I have ever seen in the wild, and I saw it in our own backyard, right next to our house!

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Look how well it's camouflaged. They are beautiful animals though dangerous.
 
J

JDCrimson

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Feb 12, 2006
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I remember chasing a Black Racer one time on my tractor while bailing hay. I had never seen one before but I remember my grandparents telling me about them how they were almost playful in that they would chase you and then you could turn around chase them. Said they that would look like they were gliding across the ground. Sure enough, when I encountered that BR in the hay field I chased it a ways and it looked like it wasnt even on the ground - moving really fast. Just like my grandpa said, when I turned around to head back to work the snake started following me...

I have not seen one since that time... But then again I havent had much time to spend in the hayfield since college...
 
TIDE-HSV

TIDE-HSV

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Oct 13, 1999
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capnfrog said:
I was always told as a boy child that if the color goes all the way around, it is poisonous. If it has a white belly it is non poisonous. Kirbys' snake appears to be a cotton mouth and very poisonous. Also poisonous snakes don't climb trees. I hate snakes and sticks that look like snakes.
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So much wrong here. Belly color has absolutely nothing to do with being poisonous. Second, that is not a water moccasin. I grew up with them on the Tennessee River, occasionally beating them over the head with my paddle to keep them out of the boat. It's just an extraordinarily fat water snake which has probably eaten lately. Next, as I posted way, way above, the head is all wrong for a pit viper, the family the moccasin belongs to. Finally, poisonous snakes, including rattlers, do climb. They don't normally climb because using their venom on ground prey is more efficient than the non-poisonous breeds that climb for birds and small mammals. However, the last rattler we had our neighborhood herpetologist come and pick up was up about six feet up in one of our gardens in a low tree. My wife came face to face with it. (She's not especially afraid of snakes - she grew up spending a lot of time in the woods, as did I.) It couldn't have climbed much further, because it was a low-growing shrubby tree, but there it was. As I said, we have always had a rodent problem, having 3 acres of woods and having thousands of acres of woodlands around us, with some easy funnels into our yard for deer and you name it. Snakes are very helpful and we only have the pit vipers relocated. They help save the garden from voles, the foundation and patio from chipmunks and the attic from squirrels. They will even kill the odd groundhog, although they can't swallow them. You guys can continue to be horrified, but they're my friends...
 
bat123

bat123

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Jul 20, 2000
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Back for a return engagement in "Jolly Ole England
deliveryman35 said:
Looks like a chicken snake to me....they can be big and intimidating, but they aren't poisonous.

All you snake-haters, don't forget, snakes ARE good for one thing--they help keep the rodent population in check. I'd rather have a few snakes slithering around out in the woods than be up to our ears in rats, mice, and other disease-carrying vermin.
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So we need to ship a truck load to aUbren?
 
B

BadgerTidefan

1st Team
Dec 2, 2006
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It don't think it's a cottonmouth myself. The head looks wrong. I killed a rattlesnake in the flower bed by the house a couple weeks ago. I saw the cats stalking something, they were being cautious, getting close and then backing off. I went over the check it out and could hear the buzz. It was the first time I've ever heard the rattle. It was different from what I expected, it sounded like an electric motor with a buzz. Anyway, 20 guage buckshot took care of the problem. I think it may explain why a couple of yard cats disappeared this year. My first father in law had a saying I agree with.....there are really on 5 kinds of snakes he didn't like: big ones, little ones, live ones, dead ones and pictures of snakes.
 
B

bama61

1st Team
Aug 24, 2004
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North Alabama
TIDE-HSV said:
So much wrong here. Belly color has absolutely nothing to do with being poisonous. Second, that is not a water moccasin. I grew up with them on the Tennessee River, occasionally beating them over the head with my paddle to keep them out of the boat. It's just an extraordinarily fat water snake which has probably eaten lately. Next, as I posted way, way above, the head is all wrong for a pit viper, the family the moccasin belongs to. Finally, poisonous snakes, including rattlers, do climb. They don't normally climb because using their venom on ground prey is more efficient than the non-poisonous breeds that climb for birds and small mammals. However, the last rattler we had our neighborhood herpetologist come and pick up was up about six feet up in one of our gardens in a low tree. My wife came face to face with it. (She's not especially afraid of snakes - she grew up spending a lot of time in the woods, as did I.) It couldn't have climbed much further, because it was a low-growing shrubby tree, but there it was. As I said, we have always had a rodent problem, having 3 acres of woods and having thousands of acres of woodlands around us, with some easy funnels into our yard for deer and you name it. Snakes are very helpful and we only have the pit vipers relocated. They help save the garden from voles, the foundation and patio from chipmunks and the attic from squirrels. They will even kill the odd groundhog, although they can't swallow them. You guys can continue to be horrified, but they're my friends...
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Earle is correct, the snake in that picture is not any type of pit viper and since it doesn't remotely resemble a coral snake is a non-poisonous snake. Moccasins, copperheads, and rattlesnakes are all members of the pit viper family and all have the characteristic triangular heads with a relative thin neck.

As a pre-teen and teenager I used to catch the things and sell them to the Ross Allen Reptile Institute. They paid a dollar a foot for live snakes in good condition, a princely sum for a kid in late 40's and early 50's. Caught plenty of cottonmouths, but only a few rattlers and copperheads. Never got lucky enough to catch a coral snake though, and those bad boys were worth a king's ransom, a whole seventy five bucks. That business operation ended abruptly when my mother found out what I was doing and that I was keeping those snakes in cages behind our garage.
 
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uaintn

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Aug 2, 2000
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Agree that is probably not of the poisonous variety, but a snake that big will scare the fool out of most people. And plenty of the non-poisonous variety will bite you, which can end up causing its own set of problems -- infection, a lifetime of bad dreams, etc.
 
JIB

JIB

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While we're correcting people, I'd like to point out that there is no such thing as a poisonous snake. Snakes are venomous, not poisonous. Poison ivy is poisonous, certain frogs are poisonou. Snakes can only be venomous.
 
TIDE-HSV

TIDE-HSV

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uaintn said:
Agree that is probably not of the poisonous variety, but a snake that big will scare the fool out of most people. And plenty of the non-poisonous variety will bite you, which can end up causing its own set of problems -- infection, a lifetime of bad dreams, etc.
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If that's intended to be a justification for killing them, it's a massive fail. Neither the venomous (bow to JIB below) nor the non-venomous will go out of their way to bite you. They're not vicious. All you have to do is be conscious of your surroundings and where you place your hands and feet in their habitat (woods, brush). I don't even think about it, it's so ingrained. I learned it as a kid, just as I learned never to let the muzzle of my gun pass over a fellow hunter (no Dick Cheney, I). If they are out in open in grass in your yard, if you don't have a handy way to have them relocated, just wait and they will leave, since they weren't in a productive habitat to begin with. Unless they're monsters in size or Brown Recluses, I also don't kill spiders, since they're after insects which are not my friends. "The enemy of my enemy," and all that.

The biggest rattler I ever saw was in a pretty remote part of the Smokies, lower Forney Creek, at a campsite which used to be an old CCC camp, with some sheet metal, etc., lying around. I walked down the creek a way, to look at some old CCC remains while my daughter took a nap. Almost instantly after taking a left off the trail, I encountered the biggest rattler I'd ever seen in person, about the thickness of my forearm. It was coiled, tail erect, but it didn't rattle. In fact, I said aloud "You didn't even rattle!" I hurried back up the trail to get my daughter, but it was gone when we got back down to the site. Again, all you have to do is be conscious of their possible presence in their habitat and they are not a danger and there's no logical reason for indiscriminate killing. These days, there's no reason to kill them out of millennia-old prejudices. When I was a kid, we were told that all raptors were bad, so we shot hawks whenever we could. I'm now ashamed of it. I guess snakes' sex appeal is so low that it'll take a long time before people can reason about them and get over their prejudices...
 
IH8Orange

IH8Orange

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JIB said:
While we're correcting people, I'd like to point out that there is no such thing as a poisonous snake. Snakes are venomous, not poisonous. Poison ivy is poisonous, certain frogs are poisonou. Snakes can only be venomous.
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I am prostrate on the floor, bowing in reverence to you O' great pedantic master. :biggrin:

Seriously, very impressive. :pDT_Armataz_02_43:
 
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