Ssssssnakes Alive!

[wfwhitaker]

Listening to some old Monty Python tapes is close enough to snakes for me, thank you very much.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Not a photo story, but it is a snake story. After a heavy rain I was looking out the widow of my home office and saw a garter snake hightailing across my garden, since the snake was on the way to another house I decided to get it to go towards the empty lot on the southwest corner of my house. Well, as I was pushing the snake towards the fence, my back door neighbor's wife started screaming and my neighbor came out running with a machete....lol...the snake was about 4 feet long and of course as I was pushing it, it tried to bite me, but it was merely defensive. My neighbor thought the snake was attacking me and was ready to kill the poor snake....lol..In the end, I was able to get it through a hole in the fence and it merrily went on its way.

[Richard Boulware]

About ten years ago, I took my Avon river raft up into southern Wyoming to drift down the North Platte, from Saratoga to I-80. I made camp at a beautiful spot at Ox Bow Bend, beside an old 1880's ranch site. I had my Super Technika and my fishing gear.

I waded the river, about two miles upstream, and went to do some fine trout fishing. That was when all hell broke loose.

In scouting the river, I had walked out on the grassy edge of the river. Below me was a large field of soft-ball size rocks. The bank was udercut and colapsed under my weight, and I went knees down on top of the rocks. The pain was incredible (and later caused me to have both knees 'scoped). I waded out into the water of the river to get some cold on my aching knees. I could hardly walk.

I made a couple of casts and a gust of wing brought my fly back and burried it in my left forearm past the barb. By now I was really pissed. I grabbed my forceps, locked them on to the fly and looking the other way, as I ripped it out of my arm, and tied my bandana around my bleeding left arm.

Deciding it was time to get back to my campsite, I followed the river close to the bank. About a mile from camp, I was startled to see, not six feet in front of me a Wyoming rattlesnake...coiled and inviting me to come closer.

I declined his invitation, and instead, drew my Smith and Wesson, Combat Magnum 357, chambered with snake loads of buckshot. If the first round didn't put him away the final five did. I was MAD. When I was sure he was 'dispatched', I measured him at 6'4"...cut off his ten-ring rattle tail, and limped, in pain across to a mid river island, after reloading my 357. I was out of snake loads, and rechambered with standard, heay weight 357 cal. slugs.

That was when I met his twin brother, also swimming the river...but now on the mid-river island. The brother also coiled, and I could not go around him with my badly injured knees. By now I was REALLY PISSED.

Again I took out my .357 and blasted him, and each time the round hit, base-ball sized rocks jumped a yard into the air. Three of my six rounds hit him and cut him in pieces.. Unfortunately the last round blew his tail off, so I had no record of my encounted with #2 Wyoming rattle snake, on STERIOIDS. (any imaginary observer to this scene would have been laughing hysterically at this scenario).

In incredible pain, and totally pissed, I neared camp but had to cross the river again, where I tripped on a submerged rock, fell forward, and lost my prescription polaroid sunglassed.

Finally,..... camp, my tent and raft were in sight, and I opened my cooler, retreived a bottle of good wine, forgot dinner, and settled down, shaken,... with some good wine which I quickly consumed, and fell asleep.

My day from hell was finally over.

(P.S. As anybody who is a Wyoming local will tell you....you never go into the Wyoming boondocks unarmed. The year before, we had floated past of group of drunken 'Hells-Angels' type bikers, who were making jokes about shooting holes in my river raft, and a couple of years before that, a school bus load of west coast hippies, camped at rivers edge made the same threat. In Wyoming boonies.... Forewarned MEANS for-armed. Now, on my Avon, is a Remmington Police Magnum 12 ga. shotgun with extended magazine, laser sight, and 50 rounds)

"Bring 'em on!

[Brian Schall]

Last summer I hooked up with Scott from Boston thru the photo.net LF forum. He was in Albuquerque for a few days on a shoot and wanted to know where to go on Sat. I told him to call me when he got in town and I would take him out shooting.

Bright and early on Sat. we were headed to Tent Rocks. We were the first car down the dirt road after the gate was unlocked. All of a sudden I slammed on my brakes and came to a sliding stop, killed the engine and jumped out saying " Look at this!" Crawling across the road was a 6 foot western diamondback rattler. Scott was hanging back saying "that's cool" while I was running towards the rattler saying "THAT'S COOL!" I kept getting closer and tried to get it to coil and rattle. We probably got within 5 feet of it, but it just kept crawling across the road. I'm sure Scott, who had known me for all of 45 minutes, thought I was a little strange. By the end of the day Scott KNEW I was a little strange.

[sanking]

I grew up in a part of Louisiana where snakes are common and as a young boy had many encounters with poisonous snakes, but my best snake story that involves photography took place in Utah a couple of years back. In Nine Mile Canyon I came up across a very large petroglyph panel of rattlesnakes on a cliff about 50 feet above the road. The panel was too far away to photograph but I could see that if I scrambled up the hill through the small bushes there was a nice ledge where I would be able to position the camera and get the shot. So I put the backpack on and with tripod in hand started up through the bushes. About one-third of the way up the hill I was stopped dead in my tracks by the rattling of a coiled rattlesnake about 18" from my left foot. I just stood there for what seemed like an eternity as the snake continued to rattle. Then I stepped back, positioning the tripod between my feet and the snakes. I just stood there for a while trying to figure out what route I could take to continue on up the hill and avoid the snake. Then I looked up at the petroglyph again and I could see that it depicted not just one but a dozen or so snakes, and I remember thinking, wow, somebody else was here hundreds of years ago and obviously figured out that this place was full of snakes. And after some further consideration of the situation I evaluated the petroglyph again and concluded that it was really a fairly mediocre sample. And for that reason, plus the late hour, I determined that the best course of action was to head back to the car.

[Ernest Purdum]

I don't have a snake story, but I would love to have a snake skeleton as a photographic subject. They are very beautiful constructions.

[Blake]

i grew up/live in snake central. venomous high plains snake central of my youth and lakey snakey downstate water moccasins of my late whereabouts and nowtimes. encounters with rattlers seem commonplace to me, i couldn't claim a single story as all have conglomerated. i know i fiddle with water moccs a lot more now and it seems, everytime i go fishin'. best advice i can give is to wear good high leather boots and keep clear of baby venom. truth be told, i remember dad showing me how to use a snakebite kit afore i could read. by the time i could read, and i was cornsidered quite the advanced hominy and was reading very young, i was tanning their hides fer fun and profit.

certain nearby locales have weekends set aside for rattlesnake roundups.

crazy, i know,

me

[Kirk Gittings]

John.

I grew up in the SW and got used to rattlers. They are more afraid of you than vice-versa. We used to catch them as kids and sell them to the tourist traps along Route 66 on the edge of Albuquerque for their "deadly snake pits!!!" We were paid in candy. A dollars worth for every foot in length. Seemed like a good deal at the time, but wages are always low in Nuevo Mexico. We'd go out early in the morning to rock locations where we knew they would be sunning themselves carrying a long forked stick, a garbage can lid, and a pillowcase. You can figure out the work flow.

Anyway I got over my fear of snakes and ate allot of Snickers.

A few years ago I was walking down the path to an old mission church that is in a state park near here carrying my VC case and a big Bogen tripod and dragging about a dozen students behind me. A really fat, three foot rattler came out of the grass to cross the path in front of me and I casually hooked it with the toe of the cowboy boots that I had on and flipped it about twenty feet to the side and kept on walking and lecturing. I was in the middle of what I thought was an important disscusion on the Zone System or something. The students were definitely more impressed by the the snake.

I still here about that one every once in awhile.

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

One of my French colleagues told me this story.
Most Europeans do not expect to meet wild animals in Northern American Parks. So they usually consider that black bears are friendly and that rattlesnakes only show up in cow-boy movies as plastic dummies.
The colleague once visited Arches NP (UT) and waking up early he met a rattelsnake just in front of his tent at one of the official campsites. He tried to grab a heavy stone in an attempt to fight the snake, a ranger was nearby and objected : "You can't do that, rattelsnakes are a protected species" ; the colleague grumbled and tried to argue that NP's regulations actually offered a better protection to rattelsnakes than campers. OK, never argue with any officials when you are abroad, and in the Wilderness, accept that the wild beasts rule;-);-)

[Cameron Attree]

Considering I live in Australia, which probably has the largest number of venomous snakes in the world, or at least some of the deadliest, I consider myself lucky that my only close encounter was with a non-venomous variety. It happened on the last day of a camping trip to Girraween Nat Park which is about 3 hours drive south west of Brisbane, on the Queensland / New South Wales border. I was standing on the edge of the creek photographing some water foul with a long lens on my Nikon, when I felt something on the front of my left leg (I was wearing shorts). Without looking down, I first thought it was a large insect or something similar, so I gave my leg a little kick as I took my eye off the viewfinder to look down. Imagine my surprise when I found out that it wasn't an insect at all but a Green Tree Snake which had mistaken my hairy leg for a tree trunk. I think it got as big a surprise as I did (i'm no crocodile hunter!) as it slithered away rather quickly. I've come across quite a few brown and red-bellied black snakes (which are venomous), on walking tracks around the place but luckily I have managed to stay clear of them. Cheers, Cam.