Man shoots snake, snake kills man...

[BANDERSNATCH]

Not sure if this has been posted on here (I've got a bad habit of posting things after y'all have already hashed it out for a week or two ) but thought this was interesting...

Seems this guy shot a rattlesnake and, thinking it was dead, picked it up -- only to get a fatal bite.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/lo...sfla-business-headlines&track=mostemailedlink

Bandy

 

[grandpawrichard]

Evidently he wasn't a very good shot and not smart enough to know that he needed to make sure the snake was dead before he touched it! Sad and tragic story, my heart and prayers go out to his family!

D i c k

 

[fatboy84]

That is awful... I have always heard you could still get bit by a dead snake. I would assume that to be if you were messing with its mouth.

My thoughts are blow its head off and then use a shovel to scoop up any remains of the head and the snake.

When I was in college, i was working at ABAC one summer. While cropping tobacco, I heard a girl scream and she said there was a snake. She told me it was a black snake. I went over to get rid of it and saw a grayish color beside the stalk. I immediately eralized it was a cottn mouth and carefully picked the leaf blocking the view.

I wanted to kill it with a shovel but the boss lady (not someone I wanted to mess with since she was bigger than me and I was 6'3" and 200 lbs at the time) wanted me to scoop him up and throw him over the fence.

Scooped him up and halfway to the fence he started to move. I gave him fair warning that if he came off that shovel he was dead...(Like it could really understand what I was saying.)

When he hit the ground the shovel came down and off came most of the head (only hagning by a small amount of skin). Then he got thrown over the fence.

 

[papagil]

That's sad

 

[RThomas]

You should handle a venomous snake the same way you do a gun- always assume it's loaded.

 

[HT2]

Sad.........

Oh man.........

This is awful..........

If/when I kill 'em..............I chop that head off and throw in away.........And, then I still ain't pickin' it up by hand.........

Ain't no way.........

 

[Sandman619]

WOW

 

[Nicodemus]

Always cut that head off before you commence to skinnin` em.

 

[Dog Hunter]

Always cut that head off before you commence to skinnin` em.

Head or no head, I am not skinning one or picking one up with my hand.

 

[Snakeman]

I don't know what it is about snakes, whether it's that they're cold-blooded, or it's that they're somewhat pre-historic. It seems that a lot of their central nervous system processing goes on in the spinal cord, not in the brain. Examples:

I cut the head completely off a 4' timber rattler and buried it. I went back to the snake, and picked him up by the tail, to check out his rattles. The snake spun around and struck me on the hand that was holding his tail!

I had skinned and eviscerated a freshly killed diamondback rattler, and placed the carcass in a (closed) ziplock bag. I was going to take the meat to a friend of mine at work the next day. I placed the snake in the refrigerator, and the next morning, the snake had pushed against the inside of the bag hard enough to open the seal and crawl halfway out.

My favorite story. My Dad skinned and eviscerated a freshly killed diamondback. He took the carcass in the house and placed it in a large stainless steel mixing bowl, and placed the mixing bowl in the kitchen sink. He went back outside to dispose of the entrals and put the skin in the freezer, telling Mom, "Don't let this snake crawl away". When he finished cleaning up outside, and came back in, the snake (flesh and bones only) had crawled out of the bowl and was laying around the rim of the sink.

You can't be too careful around these critters. I've also seen the severed head of a rattlesnake latch on to a hounds nose that got too close.

The Snakeman

 

[BANDERSNATCH]

Now I'm gonna have nightmares!!!!

I've eaten snake before, but it's hard to get over how they look in the pan. Do you remove the ribs before cooking?

(Us rednecks always need one or two more critter recipes)

Bandy

 

[Snakeman]

Most folks just cut the snakes across the backbone and leave the ribs in, although there's very little meat on the ribs. If you get a large enough snake, you can cut the meat out of the backbone, just like cutting the backstraps out of a deer.

The Snakeman

 

[fatboy84]

Dang Snakeman......Now you got me all creeped out about them. I've seen them wiggle around and crawl some without the head but never seen one strike.

I would have soiled my britches if a headless snake had struck at me, or if I opened the fridge and saw a skinned out headless snake had pushed out of the bag.

 

[fishdog]

Shut up. I'm freaking out and I like snakes!

 

[Hogtown]

This incident occured about 50 miles east of me and was well reported in the local paper. The 5 foot snake was shot several times in the head and had crawled under the edge of a trailer. It only had a portion of its head and one fang remaining. When the victim grabbed the tail to drag the snake out it spun around and bit him as quickly as if it had never been shot. I posted on a "snake thread" about a month or so ago and stated that it is normally best to simply let snakes go because the vast majority of people who get bit are trying to kill a snake. There is a secondary issue also. If you are walking through the woods and step near/on a snake you have a pretty good chance of receiving a "dry" bite. However, if you've been busy poking/chopping/or otherwise irritating the snake you are going to get the maximum load of venom the snake can muster. Thats what happened and this poor fellow died. By the way, he died despite the best and quickest medical care possible. He was helicoptered to the Univ. of Florida Shands Medical Center (50 miles) almost immeadiately after being bitten. He had around the clock care administered by the absolute best people available and yet he died. If he was back in the woods when he got bit, he probably would have never made it back to the truck.