Importance of snakes to hikers safety

[Mountainman38]

Check this out. This Black Ratsnake rattles in the dry leaves pretty well. It's louder than the camera picked it up.

[youtube]Nm2pMyCUBu0[/youtube]

Where I grew up in Northern California, the gopher snakes would rattle their tails in the dry grass to make a buzzing noise. Not exactly like a rattler (that's a pretty distinctive sound), but they were trying.

Problem is, a lot of gopher snakes (or bull snakes, as they're called up here in Eastern Washington) are killed when they're mistaken for rattlers.

When I was a kid, some "knowledgeable" person authoritatively told us that rattlers were breeding with gopher snakes, and producing venomous offspring that didn't rattle. He also said that if you killed a rattler to be sure and bury it, because it wouldn't die until sundown...

 

[lmalterna]

MD,
Thanks for a very sensible and informative discussion. I have been a snake fan since I was a boy on the farm. I would catch Black Rats and keep them in coal bucket- feed them wild mice I caught in traps for a week each and then put them back where I found them. Grandpa laughed that they were waiting in line for me to catch them!!
I have been bitten by non hots MANY times- more than I could count- every one was in my hand, in the process of being caught or in a cage(captive born pet). Never bitten by a hot despite MANY encounters gathering firewood, working fence and just working on farms. I even caught one Copperhead that I found while flipping boards in a stack. Its head was within inches of my fingers for several boards but it never struck, even during capture. Not to say catching hots is a good idea!!! I knew what would happen if bitten- hours of agony followed by a couple of days of misery and a long recovering. But it would have been my call/my fault.
I bred SWestern Colubrids for a few years but am now out of that and down to one Arizona Mountain Kingsnake for a pet. I used to give demos for Scout packs and Elementary School classes on the benefits of having snakes in our surroundings and dispell many false myths.
For a time I was relocating Black Rats to my neighborhood( interspersed farms and single home with good woodlots) until I started to hear of neighbors bragging of killing them....We had a field mice and vole problem. Keep preaching and making converts
2Door

 

[Briarbrow]

Thanks for the great post; I need some good discussion-ammo as I seem to meet a lot of snake haters.

Me,? I greatly enjoy watching wild predators working their daily gig anytime I get the chance: praying mantis, heron... it doesn't matter; I always stop and watch what they do. Good teachers.

When they surprise me by suddenly appearing right there(even though they were there all along)I become instantly aware that I am lost in thought rather than being in the here and now

 

[Md 25v]

Briarbrow- you said you liked Praying Mantis so I couldn't help but share this pic. This little guy was hanging out next to a fencepost trying to sneak up on a spider.