yesterday, while taking the dog for a walk, mrs adm and i came across a blacksnake basking in the sun. unfortunately, it saw us before we saw it, so it slithered off pretty quick.
and a few weeks ago, i was driving along the highway when i saw a brown snake in the middle of the road. i pulled over, got out, and prodded it until it moved onto the shoulder.
the locals around here hate snakes - i'm surprised they don't celebrate whacking day. every second person has a tale about how they encountered an eight foot king brown (which is in itself unlikely) and then either shot it or cut off its head with a shovel.
me, i love snakes. i have a pet carpet python and i think she's completely amazing.
this is her when she was a baby. i don't have any recent pics, but she's about four feet long now.
so here's a thread dedicated to snakes and how awesome they are.
That first one is a red belly black. Snakes scare the living bejesus out of me..& yes, I have tales such as those you've mentioned.
i know it's a red belly black. also known as the common blacksnake.
i like to think i'm a lover of all/most animals but i don't think it's safe to trust King Browns/Brown snakes enough to poke 'em with a stick/move them in any way.
They're way too aggressive.
Be careful. i've heard too many stories of people getting bitten numerous times by these bastards..
We encounter at least 3-4 of them in our garden each summer. Tigers and browns.
i hope you didnt go prodding them with a stick, blake-o.
You've got pets, right? Do they know to stay clear of them?
i've never known snakes to be aggressive. the one i found on the highway was totally mellow. it reared up a couple of times when i poked it, but it didn't strike.
i suppose the one on the road was pretty groggy from all the heat. I guess my only contact with them has been when they're eating our chickens or their eggs and they're usually pretty aggressive.
They can be very aggressive...I've been struck at a couple of times.
i love snakes. when i was a kid, i wanted to be a herpetologist.
re: the pets comments, well worth thinking about - my cat was killed after she hunted down a dugite just coming out of hibernation (when their venom is at max potency/volume). dugite bites aren't usually fatal, but can make an adult human pretty fuckin' sick. something cat sized usually dies in a couple of hours. she hung on for a week, tough little thing.
That's one thing that turns me off moving to the country or a city with more greenspace. I grew up with red bellied black snakes in my backyard, and then taipans, yellow faced whip snakes, brownsnakes and the rest cruising around our verandah in Central Australia and the top end. I have no problem with pythons, just venomous snakes. Ick.
yeah, i'd probably be a little more wary of taipans! fuckin' ell...
My dogs could tell the difference between venomous and non-venomous snakes - they'd bark when a python was around the house, but go for the kill when it was a king brown.
Unfortunately, this method of madness caught up with my Jack Russel when her eyesight started failing and she misjudged a taipan tug of war with her brother and ended up bitten. Still, her record was Jody 20, snakes 1.
yeah, we've been told by our neighbours that the tangled grove of plum trees and waist-high grass in the back corner of our yard is a constant haven for browns. which on one hand excites me - i'd love to come across a brown snake in my own backyard. but we've got a dog, a cat and two chickens, so it's not a risk i'm willing to take. we're clearing it out now to discourage them from nesting in there.
One Halloween in Central Australia one of the rangers found a children's python on the side of the road. We all took turns carrying it as part of our costumes while trick or treating, it was awesome.
inland taipan venom is more than 50 - FIFTY - times more potent than that of the indian cobra.
and lambs, you have lambs as well.
WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE LAMBS!
I think I might move to Tasmania. No snakes there except for tiger snakes, is that right?
i can't believe i forgot to mention the lambs.
you can't move to tasmania chips, coz that is hard to get to for me. mind you probably easier than marrickville......
i've been tipped off to a spot on brown mountain where you're almost guaranteed to come across a tiger snake or three. i can't wait to get down there when the weather's a bit warmer.
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I love news items like that snake in Myer one.
The best part is Tom 'The Snake Man' Vida insisting the man was bitten by a rat, despite the paramedics saying it was definitely a snake.
a brown snake in the melbourne CBD? doubtful. an errant red-bellied black? maybe.
There's brown snakes where I work in Richmond, adam, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were all along the Yarra into the city. Plenty of mice and rats to eat.
But Myer seems a bit of a stretch.
really? wow.
the hospital confirmed that it was a brown snake bite
ADM- snakes are active during the warmer months at Yarra Bend Park
well there you go. i'd say there's no snakes within a 30km radius of the sydney CBD.
there's new building works at myers at the moment... and snakes often hitchhike underneith trucks...
There's also snakes in my hood, down by the Maribyrnong River. There's warning signs about them everywhere.
Escaped pet python strangled US child: officials
July 2, 2009 - 8:35AM
A 3.6-metre pet Burmese python has broken out of a home terrarium and strangled a two-year-old girl in her bedroom in central Florida, authorities say.
Shaunnia Hare was already dead when paramedics arrived at about 10am on Wednesday, police Lieutenant Bobby Caruthers said.
Charles Jason Darnell, the snake's owner and the boyfriend of Shaunnia's mother, discovered the snake missing from its terrarium and went to the girl's room, where he found it on the girl and bite marks on her head, Caruthers said.
Darnell, 32, stabbed the snake until he was able to pry the child away.
Authorities removed the snake from the home on Wednesday afternoon. Once outside the small home, bordered by cow pastures, the live snake was placed in a bag then inside a dog crate.
Darnell did not have a permit for the snake, which would be a second-degree misdemeanour, said Joy Hill, a spokeswoman with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
He has not been charged, but Caruthers said investigators were looking into whether there was child neglect or if any other laws were broken.
Hill said the snake will be placed with someone who has a permit, pending an investigation into the girl's death.
The Humane Society of the United States said that including Wednesday's death, at least 12 people have been killed in the US by pet pythons since 1980, including five children.
Burmese pythons are not native to Florida, but they easily survive in the state and can reach a length of eight metres and weigh more than 90kg.
Some owners have freed pythons into the wild and a population of them has taken hold in the Everglades. One killed an alligator and then burst when it tried to eat it. Scientists also speculate a number of Burmese pythons escaped in 1992 from pet shops battered by Hurricane Andrew and have been reproducing since.
''It's becoming more and more of a problem, perhaps no fault of the animal, more a fault of the human,'' said Jorge Pino, a state wildlife commission spokesman. ''People purchase these animals when they're small. When they grow, they either can't control them or release them.''
George Van Horn, owner of Reptile World Serpentarium in St Cloud, said the strangulation could have occurred because the snake felt threatened or because it thought the child was food.
''They are always operating on instinct,'' he said. ''Even the largest person can become overpowered by a python.''
AP
My daughter was bitten by a snake at work this morning. She soldiered on with her presentation at the zoo because she didn't want to alarm the audience.. She tried to hide the bleeding with a glove.
It was a python.
Ubu said about 1 year ago:
Fuck this thread freaks me out. I'm petrified of snakes. At one point my phobia was so bad that I couldn't get up to change the channel if a snake was on the telly.
hahahahaha!
also, what a trooper, godzilla.
This is a recurring nightmare of mine
I'm watching a foxtel tv show where Austin Stevens catches rattlesnakes and take photos of them. He is a fucking nut.
I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep tonight.
ooh
Brown snakes are the most graceful swimmers. Well I've seen one swim, who had hitched a ride in the boat at work and peacefully jumped out and swam to shore.
I have seen a brown snake once.
Has anybody ever seen a snake along the Merri in the Fitzroy/Brunswick/Coburg areas? There's warning signs but I've never seen them... doesn't seem to be an awful lot of secluded bushland for them to get comfortable in.
I saw a photos of a little acoustic festival along merri creek and a snake cruised straight between all the people and was not scared at all. And then a Canadian girl wanted to touch it and everyone yelled at her.
So yes, I have seen photos of a snake on Merri creek.