The other night my girlfriend and I were having a conversation about old sayings that have been around for hundreds of years or so, and it made me think of one that I actually use.
“Red touch yellow, kill a fellow. Red touch black, friend of Jack.”
This is an adage that some in the U.S. use, especially in Florida. It’s one way you can tell the difference between a harmless Scarlet King Snake and America’s cobra, the deadly Coral Snake.
I’ve always loved snakes. Growing up as an outdoorsy kid in Georgia and living in Florida for many years, I’ve had many encounters, mainly because I went looking for them lol.
As a boy and young teen, my friends and I would spend countless hours in the woods looking for snakes. If anyone in my neighborhood had a snake issue, they would call me. Venomous or not, it didn’t matter. I would take care of it.
I’ve been bitten many times by harmless ones, and I’ve had some close calls handling dangerous ones. One memory I can still see clear as day in my mind.
I was around 10 years old. My friends and I had been back in the woods fishing this particular creek, and there was like a little swampy area with a trickle of a waterfall about 10 feet high. So I started climbing up it.
There was this one small ledge. As I pulled my head up over it, I came face to face with one of the largest Water Moccasins I’ve ever seen, aka the Cottonmouth. Its head was about the size of a tennis ball, and it was all coiled up, just inches from my nose.
We were staring at each other there for a second, both of us surprised. Lucky for me, it was just relaxing and sunning itself.
I slowly lowered myself back below the ledge, and that was it. End of story.
Later in the evening, after talking with my girlfriend, I still had snakes on my mind, so I decided to go on Wikipedia and read about all the documented snakebite deaths in American history. It was just fascinating.
So many people were bitten while in church and later died. How effin crazy is that? Snakes in church is a whole nother subject for another time.
One story was especially sad. The pastor of this one church was letting his young pregnant wife handle a rattlesnake, I believe it was, and she was bitten. Both she and the baby died, and he had charges brought against him.
Another story was from the 1970s. A woman in Florida was driving one evening and had to pee, so she pulled over on the side of the road and went behind some bushes. She didn’t even know she had been bitten. She thought it was a thorn bush that poked her in the butt.
She was dead the next morning.
It wasn’t a thorn. It was rattlesnake fangs.
Many of the stories are interesting. I’ll post the Wikipedia link below in case anyone wants to check it out.
So let’s get back to the Coral Snake. It’s different from America’s other deadly snakes. Its venom is a neurotoxin, which means it targets the nervous system instead of destroying tissue. There may not be much pain or swelling, but it will totally shut you down and paralyze the diaphragm. The cause of death is respiratory failure. Without proper treatment, you don’t stand much of a chance.
Coral Snakes are Elapids, the same family as cobras, mambas, kraits, sea snakes, and like the brown snake and others found in Australia.
We have 3 species of Coral Snakes here in the U.S. The Eastern Coral, Texas Coral, and Sonoran or Arizona Coral.
I’ve handled some of the Eastern ones from my years living in Florida. From my experience with them, they have been pretty chill for the most part, but not always. I have seen them bite.
At times I would hold them freely without securing the head if I felt that particular one was calm enough. Don’t ever do this yourself. It’s best to not even handle them.
Here’s 2 lil quick stories.
One evening I was sitting out on my enclosed back patio and one slithered close to my feet. I ended up handling that one freely and took it to the woods on the edge of my backyard and released it.
Another time, I was standing in my backyard one morning having coffee and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a fairly large one. I didn’t hold him loosely because he tried to open his mouth and bite a few times, and he showed me his 2 tiny needle teeth.
Elapids have different fangs from vipers or rear fanged snakes. They don’t fold back. They are just lil short, sharp, fixed, hollow needles.
I have so many stories I could tell you regarding my snake encounters, maybe some other time. I’m tired of writing now, and I want to go get some caffeine.
But yeah, snakes are so cool to me. Heck, ya know what? All living creatures are cool. And it’s funny how this story slithered into my mind from a conversation with someone who is the coolest of cool, my favorite living creature, my amazing girlfriend. ❤️🔥🐍❤️🔥
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Cool Snake Pics
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Cool Girlfriend Henna Pics
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Link for snakebite stories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in_the_United_States
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