Say you wake up with company in your sleeping bag (snake)????

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DocGP

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Feb 22, 2009
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Watching Les Stroud in Africa tonight and he tells of a bush story about a man waking up with a Black Mamba in his sleeping bag. Said his friends drag him out of the bag by ths shoulders in about 3 seconds and he is bitten 13 times by the mamba. He didn't make it.

SO, what do you do? I don't have to worry about a black mamba, but cotton mouth or copperhead, maybe rattle snake.....heck, wouldn't matter to me. I don't want ANY of them in my bedroll.

Only thing I could come up with that would be an option would be to lay there till he decides to leave. If you remain motionless, eventually he will (I assume) move on. The only way I could think of to expedidte the process would be to somehow create smoke (without fire) around the person in the bag to maybe run the snake out. Problem with that is when said person starts coughing, they might get bitten.

Any ideas on what to do that WOULDN'T get you bitten?

Doc
 
I remember a story From when I was a kid in the readers digest.
A bloke climbed into his sleeping bag Central America (I guess) felt movement in the bottom of the bag he indicated to his mates he had a snake in the bottom of his bag. They removed the tarp over the top and allowed the sun to beat down on the bloke
(O.K lets not get into why he was getting into his sleeping bag during daylight.)
Eventually it got so hot the snake got the....annoyed and crawled out past his head "oh no the dreaded fer de lance. Chopped it up with a machete.
Is that a possible answer?
Carl
 
try not to panic (yeah, right!) stay still and hope for the best. hahahaha.
maybe try to get it to move away from me. but I have no idea how.
 
Sleeping with a snake in Oz is probably a great way to make sure you don't wake up, so it's not going to be a problem. :)



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DocGP said:
Only thing I could come up with that would be an option would be to lay there till he decides to leave. If you remain motionless, eventually he will (I assume) move on.
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I'd say that would be the best option. I would try to avoid this from happening in the first place as much as possible. Keep the sleeping bag rolled until you are ready to get in and keeping the openings in the sleeping bag as tight as you can around you so that there aren't many ways for critters to get in. Same goes for boots and anythings else that something might burrow into. A thought with the sleeping bag is maybe to take off your belt and wrap it around the bag while your in it, around your chest and under your armpits to limit the amount of open space for something to get into. Kind of the same idea that you'd use a wader belt for keeping water out if you fell in the river with chest waders on. (ask me how I know that this is a good idea)
 
+1 on being careful. I never camped very far south, but I've heard that there are biting spiders around Florida that can be very troublesome if they get into your tent, sleeping bag or boot.
 
When I was a teenager camping in the Linville Gorge area of North Carolina had some animal with a bushy tail run inside my sleeping bag and back out in the middle of the night. The incident lasted 1-3 seconds. It will freak you out. Cant even imagine a snake.
 
my dad told me a story when he was doin exercises (he was in the australian armoured core) in north east queensland and this happened to a bloke with a king brown. All they could do was wait for the snake to leave. King browns are notoriously angry bastards and (in the top 10 for deadliest venoms i think).
still they had a good laugh at the poor bastards bed mate hahaha
 
We lived outside of the Fishing Village of Mayport when Dad was stationed at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in 1962. There was this old guy who owned a nursery and had a little store, run by his wife, that sold candy, sodas and bobbles and us kids would hang around. These two had to be in their 70s at the time.

Mr. Vasherin had always lived in Florida and he would tell stories of old Florida, who knew how much truth they contained but he came across as a very serious man, not tolerant of foolishness. He told a story of waking up with snakes in his beard on occasion, pygmy rattlers and eastern diamond backs. He said he would just lie there as still as he could be, keeping an even breath until the sun came up, he said they would just wriggle off. He told us snakes don’t want to bite you, they only want to bite food and we ain’t snake food, he said they only make so much venom and they like to parcel it out according to what they hunt and if they bite something big in self defense then they ain’t got enough to hunt with or defend themselves against predators.

They had the coolest skull and crossbones ring that I always saved my money for but when I would go to buy it Mrs. Vasherin would somehow always talk me out of buying it. Strange. I wish I could have known Mr. Vasherin when I was older than 9. Today I would love to hear his stories of old Florida.
 
Was just about to write what I read about this in some survival book somewhere (SAS survival maybe? not sure), but Hushnel pretty much covered it.

The snakes are just looking for a nice place to lay up over night, just like you are. They'll leave in the morning if you don't upset them too much. Just lie there and wait. They don't want to bite you.
 
Not that serious but I was bitten by a centipede when I was sleeping at home several weeks ago.
He came up to my bed just the moment I rolled over him.

After that, I look into my shoes carefully before I put them on.
 
This is the main reason I won't sleep under just a tarp by choice. Zipped up tent or swag to keep the buggers out. IMO you'd be lucky to know it was there, more likely scenario is it slithers in while you're asleep and you turn over on it and it bites defending itself.
 
apsilon said:
This is the main reason I won't sleep under just a tarp by choice. Zipped up tent or swag to keep the buggers out. IMO you'd be lucky to know it was there, more likely scenario is it slithers in while you're asleep and you turn over on it and it bites defending itself.
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yep - having a tent crossed my mind throughout the whole thread.
 
kgd said:
yep - having a tent crossed my mind throughout the whole thread.
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If you're in the UK, you'll still get raided by hedgehogs looking for food. They know that tents = tasty snacks!
 
All of this just makes me glad I like to sleep in a hammock. :D It's like a suspended tent.
 
Recently, I hiked about 16 miles of the AT with an overnight a little over half way through our short trip. While hiking we encountered a few snakes and some fairly fresh bear scat. I have to admit, I would not want to wake up with either type of critter in my sleeping bag.
 
Snakes aren't much of a concern to me around these parts, but when I was younger and in the air cadets, we went out for a week-end campout and somehow a pack of mice/rats got into my sleeping in the mid of the night.... not the coolest thing to be woken up by at 4am.:D
 
A friend was bitten by a copperhead sleeping under a tarp or in a tent with the flaps open, I can't remember which.

I think he rolled over on it in his sleep though. It wasn't in his bag.

He just toughed it out. Said it hurt like h*ll but he stayed drunk to deal with the pain.
 
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