Fighting Irish Forums

oh lads... had a good and frightful scare this weekend. i actually took a Sunday off, and me and my wife was puttering around in the flower beds and cleaning off the breezeway room/porch and deck.

we spent most of the day getting the big flower bed ready to plant, then planted several flowers/hedges/vines/etc... in it. about dusk, we called it a day and my wife went to fire up the grill to do us some hot dogs. i remembered that i had left a small hand spade in the flower bed and went back to fetch it. i bent down to retrieve the spade and just as my hand touched the small, wooden handle---something moved about six inches away. a quick glance and---it was a friggin' cotton mouth snake! one every bit as big around as my arm!

naturally i jumped back as if the devil himself was about to latch onto me!

let me state this for the record... i HATE snakes! being born on a farm, and stumbling across them very frequently... i learned early on NOT to fool around with the buggers. i've had/seen dogs bit by them, some lived, some didn't, but all were hurt VERY BAD and in intense pain, the ones that lived and the ones that didn't. i've seen cows and horses bitten...same thing. i even lost a fine stud horse one time over a savage bite. so yeah, though i know the old saw about "if you leave them alone, they'll leave YOU alone," just don't hold water all of the time.

true, snakes hold a very important and often unappreciated part in nature's plan of rodent and pest control, i'll grant them that... especially out in the woods, swamps or other wild places... but on the other hand, a posionous snake around a home and or dwelling has NO BUSINESS there at all. and its 'bound' to cause mischief and trouble. there's just no getting around that, no matter the part they play in nature's rodent control plan. ---and a cotton mouth IS a posionous snake, be sure! between that and a copperhead, they are the two most FEARED snakes in THIS area.

this sucker was huge... an old snake that'd been around for a long while... as i said, as big and thick as my arm, and about as long as i am tall. a big mother. and though he didn't strike me, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. you just can't mess around with a big, old, cotton mouth. they are very posionous, and very aggressive, they get scared/angry very easy, especially at this time of year, and the slightest move on a person or animals' part will set them into deadly motion. though their bite is not 'always' fatal to man or beast, you can bet big money on the fact that you will be VERY sorry for it. intense pain, possible loss of the bitten limb... and ALWAYS the chance of death. especially for young childeren, young animals... or OLD farts like me that isn't in too good a shape anyway.

no---that cotton mouth had to go. just no way around it, and with no ready and or quick means to trap or snare it and haul it away to another, safer place... unfortunately, for my own, my wife's, and my pups' safety, he had to die.

he was too close to the house to shoot, or i would have splattered him apart with my pump shotgun. that left taking him out with a shovel, axe or hoe. now i once before tried to kill a snake with an axe... not a good idea. oh, sure, if you hit it, you'll surely kill it. ah, but what if you miss? the axe is buried in the ground, and with its somewhat short handle, your arm is then down near the snake and within easy striking distance. well, the one time i tried it----naturally i missed---and almost got bit, so the axe was out of the question. also the shoved was not shaped right for the job. that left the hoe. a handy tool, no question about it, just right for chopping weeds, but hardly perfect for snake killing. but it would have to do.

i got the hoe, took careful aim, and swung. ah...yeah, i hit him sure enough, but only a glancing blow, a cut near his scaly head. AND BOY HE WAS PISSED! he came right out of that flower bed in his snaky, S-type movements, striking every second or two---trying his best to get me! sweet jesus but i was dancing back and stoking at him rapid fire with the hoe, and of course missing him every time.

i'm sure it would have looked very funny, my dancing/leaping/running back motions and the chop, chop, chop, of my swinging hoe... lol. but ah, this was life or death, and not funny to ME i can tell ya!

finally i managed a good lick on his head and he spun around and actually coiled around the blade of the hoe. i got the blade on his skull and kept slamming it into the ground and finally he was dead. a terrible and savage combat between us. and one i barely won. sheesh!

if there is a next time (and i hope there isn't) i'll use the shotgun, flower bed and near the house or not! that was just too frigging close for comfort!

any of you other chaps live in snake-infested areas... keep a close eye out and BE CAREFUL.

Beowolff

PS, a link to a cotton mouth picture. ugh!

http://www.snakesandfrogs.com/scra/snak ... yaway1.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Cottonmouth bites are supposed to be particularly nasty in that they get septic and cause rotting of the flesh around the wound.
Sometime I'll tell you about my close call with one.

The damn things stink too. Surprised yall weren't lookin for what died in that flower bed before he found you..

Copperheads smell like cucumbers..

I spent a large part of my adult life living in prime rattlesnake country. I lived ina house that over a 100 years old and had pretty good bit of room to crawl around under if need be..

One thing you NEVER did during the warm months was step out of the house with out looking around first. The rattlers loved to sleep on the porch on the cool nights, because the concrete would stay warm.

The rattlers loved to crawl around under the house. When you walked over where they were parked, they'd buzz like Hell. Then it was time to go get a quart of drip gas, turn off ALL the pilot lights on the stoves and water heater and pitch that quart of gas under the house and the old snake would leave.

Found a BIG assed old rattler out in my shop one day. I left him alone for a couple of hours and he didn't leave. ( the dumbass ) Well, I grabbed my trusty 38-40 six shooter that I wagged around on my hip back then. I pulled that hammer back and took CAREFUL aim on the offending critter.
Squeezing the trigger with much care, I torched off on his ass and thought the world had ended!! That shop was old and had a 6 foot ceiling/ roof made of tin. The muzzle blast of the six shooter reverberated through every molecule of my being. I had it stoked with black powder and the pall of smoke was blinding. Mud dauber nests were raining off the roof, dust filled the air, it was quite a show. I hit the damned snake 5 times with one shot! He lost most of his head first and the way he was coiled up that big slug plowed him a new one. Needless to say, his career was ended.

My ears were ringing, my eyes were watering, and I said more than a few choice epithets of profanity directed at the both the snake and my dumb ass for not standing OUTSIDE of the shop instead of stepping in there to shoot that bastard. He had 13 rattles and a broken one on the end. Near as I could tell, he was between five and six feet long before I chopped him up.


For those of you unfamiliar with "drip" gas, it is naturally occuring gasoline. The octane rating is pretty low due to it's high butane content. There was an old oil/gas well near the house that I got my heating gas from and it also produced aobut 50 to 100 gals of drip gas a week. I always had a few gallons on hand to wash greasy bike parts and kill weeds with.

It was also exciting to start the trash barrel on fire with too, if you waited more than 10 seconds to toss the match in the barrel, it would ignite with a rather large boom and blow the trash out of the barrel!! That is also why I'd turn off the pilot lights on the stove, etc because I didn't want the old house to launch.

Had my share of copperheads around there and the creek behind the house was full of those stinkin damned cottonmouths.

OH, and Beo, snake goo washes off the house OK if you get it before it dries. Don't axe me how I knows.

ANTI SNAKE DEVICE!

An "AK Ferret" ?

:FI:Heloego wrote:An "AK Ferret" ?

More like an AK Anti Venom Spitter.

Wonder what kind of a plane that would make. VenomSpitter - splush splush

Oh yeah, welcome to the south! Talking to a neighbor two nights ago; he kills two or three arm- sized cotton mouths in a culvert about a hundred yards from my mail box every week. Geeezzzus. He uses a nine mil Tarus, he's a lot better shot then me.

What's realy scarey, is to get a call from my wife. She calls me at work to tell me a snake's in the house. My big fear was she was going to shoot it with our 357 magnum loaded with 'snake shot'; she's a worse shot than me. She kept it cornered until i got home. It was just an Oak snake; but a quick look might make you think you have a baby rattler in the house.

Don't wack a cotton mouth with a shovel! They REALLY don't like it! They must be the only snake that actually isn't afraid of humans.

Willie,
A 38-40 fired in a closed space; your ears must still be ringing. Isn't that in the same category as firing an RPG-7 from your living room?

Igor da 'come get a cotton mouth, hell, i got plenty to spare'

agreed, cotton mouths aren't a bit afraid of humans. in fact, they seem to have the attitude that YOU should get out of THEIR way... which really is a good idea most of the time. copper heads, their direct cousins, are about as bad... and a pissed copper head will raise just as much hell on you if he can get the chance.

and small/young cotton mouths and copper heads aren't safer cause they're smaller... yeah, the old big bastages pack a whallop with their large jugs of venom---no doubt about that---but the young snakes' venom is more concentrated, making it even deadlier. jeesh... so NO cotton mouth or copper head is safer than the other. and yeah, the south is EAT up with these snakes, they're everywhere down here.

Willie, i can agreed with you over firing the 38.40 inside an old building, i've made a similiar snafu by killing a copper head inside my own shop back several years ago with my 12ga. Defender. damn! about blew my eardrums out and that's no joke. and as in your case, was pelted by a barrage of ancient dirt dauber and wasps nests that fell from the rafters.

lol...

Beowolff

Reminds me of the time when my unit ran into a big rattler during desert maneuvers. While everyone crapped themselves and ran away yelling like girls, I whipped out my Llama Super Comanche .44 mag loaded with shotshells (that was against military regulations to carry, but I sure as hell wasn't gonna crawl around in the sand without being armed!) and stood like Gary Cooper at high noon. I aimed and blasted away. Well, I soon became Gary Pooper when the smoke and dust cleared and saw the friggin rattler slithering right at me! Couldn't friggin beleive it! I ejected the spend shotshells and loaded six rounds of 240gn hollowpoints and let loose another round. This one hit just in front of the the snake, fragging it big time and blowing it in half. I shook my head the rest of the day and never bought another shotshell for the .44 again.

Z

Zeke,
How can you miss with snake shot. Geeez, even my wife can take out a snake with six rounds; i only need one myself (yeah, but this is my story). I don't know whats so lethal about the snake shot; i can blow holes through a good size snake with my 38 Spl (158gr semiwad cutters) and the snake is only a bit irriatated; hit him with snake shot (165 pellets), you'll see a couple droplets of blood and hes rolling up and dying.
Methinks some remedial training at the range is indicated.

Igor da 'i,m only joking,,, never jack with someone carrying a 44,,, unless of course, if i,m packing a 50"

Those questions and more were asked and asked again, especially since I was the only one in the unit to score Expert with a .45.
Maybe I did hit the damn thing and the pellets were just too damn small to do anything. Wasn't too much left afterwards, and I was too mortified to pursue it. LOL.

Z

how can you miss? easy---excitement. same way i missed that cotton mouth so many times with the hoe. lol. but then ya steady down and, blam! he's a deader.

i usually use my Defender, it'll easly blast em to hell... but even the sem-light weight Mossberg is a bit heavy on some of my jaunts into the woods, so then i take my Airforce survival weapon, the little skeletized stock .22 over/410ga. under. its a neat little weapon, ultra light and the 410 will pop even the largest snakes in two and i can one-hand it even with the shot shell. ka-blooie!

i also think the way the top part of the stock lifts up to reveal its cache of ammo is so damned neat. lol.

Beowolff

I used to live in Louisiana, USA where there are more cottonmouths than people. Use to have to fend them off with a boat paddle now and then when I was fishing in the local bayous. Was walking through the woods one day and came face to face with one sitting on a limb in a tree. I'll never forget that. Also was hunting with a friend once and as he was steping across a small creek, one raised its head with fangs bared ready to bite him. He lowered his shotgun instinctively and blew it's head off. Otherwise, he would have been bitten for sure. He did this in mid stride across the creek too...

Cottonmouths are very agressive snakes for sure, they will come after you for sure.

Glad there aren't any around Washington DC, USA where I live now. Only coperheads around here.

Mike (or Mick)