Thank you, St. Patrick...I really would not have created the topic here without your permission...honest! Now, where is Karen (KJArt) the snake lady...or was it Maggie? Ree loves snakes, too. Puff-adders as I recall...yeow! Wonder why men hate snakes more than women....don't like the comptition?

No snakes to mention in Hawaii - yet. All we have is an earthworm-sized blind cave-dweller which I have never seen in person. They are pretty rare.

Couldn't that last be an amphibian? Re: New Topic -- you shouldn'ta. "Reptiles" would have been perfectly acceptable -- and they're much closer to "crawlies" (numerically). You realize, I hope that this is the weekend and the only time I have to indulge in this nonsense. I cannot hold up a Topic solo as half the time I'm in a zomby-ized state of mind from work. (besides, I only discovered "ark" a coupla weeks ago and this is the first chance I had to return to it since then.

And I hope I remembered to close the tags! Hee hee!

me, too! *grin*

Karen, you at least keep me from talking to myself on weekends when everyone else is otherwise occupied. Today has been a happy change - both a Karen and a Wolfie are here to play with me and the ookies of the animal kingdom. *grin*

The Hawaiian snake could be an amphibian, but it is not. It is a true snake, thus a reptile. For someone who likes her *bugs* big so she can see them, she uses double small html to write her messages...;)

do you have sea snakes, marcia?

Probably...we get anything pelagic and reef-dwelling that can get here either under its own power or hitch-hiking on the hull of a ship. We do not hear much about sea snakesm but we have the most amazing array of morays - some bright yellow, ones that are magenta with black-rimmed white spots, electric blue ones. It is very colorful on the reef.

I couldn't resist posting this one from Food Conference posted by John: Response 54 of 60: John Burnett (mrchips) * Thu, Sep 9, 1999 (05:44) * 5 lines I'll never forget the Kalahari bushman grabbing the cobra and whacking him on the ground to kill him in the beginning of The Gods Must Be Crazy. One night in Thailand (1974), I had missed the final bus from town back to base (Sattahip) and was walking along my merry way when a cobra lifted its ugly head and challenged my right to cross his/her path on the road. I tried walking around it, but it kept mirroring my lateral moves. This was long before Gods, so I'd never seen the bushman's trick. Anyhow, I'm too slow, too cowardly, and was too drunk to try anything like that. It was about 2:30 am, and it was cooler on the road than in the dense underbrush on either side, so the cobra was staying put. I kept a respectful distance (15-20 feet), not knowing whether or not common Thai cobras can spit venom into your eyes (they can't, but I didn't know that). I wasn't going into the underbrush either, because there are snakes far more venomous than cobras in Thailand (such as Russell's adder, a beautiful green snake servicemen there call a "three stepper" because you have about three steps left in your life if one bites you). It was after curfew, so there were no vehicles on the road. When the sun came out, the road started to warm up, the cobra slid back into the bushes, and I walked the remaining mile to the base, physically shot for the day, but alive and unpoisoned. I hate snakes...occasionally have nightmares about them. I was bitten in the abdomen by a water moccasin while swimming in an Illinois creek as a child (nine years old). My mom was hysterically yelling at me, and I had to slap her back into reality to get her to take me to the doctor. Water moccasins are water loving pit vipers, are about as deadly as the common cobra or a rattlesnake, much less deadly than a mamba or a Russell's adder. But without medical attention, the bite could kill a nine year old boy in about 45 minutes. I was sick for a week. As a young man, my now deceased father saw a man die from a coral snake bite at Fort Benning, Georgia. He immediately cut the man's ankle and tried to suck out the venom to no avail. The young soldier was dead in five minutes. The coral snake, a colorful, beautifully banded adder, is the deadliest snake on the North American continent.

oh my God! i loved that movie (the gods must be crazy). the AM and i would watch it over and over again and laugh our butts off!

That was hilarious from the descent of the coke bottle onward...Brilliant! Glad there are not snakes yet in Hawaii!!!

GOVERNMENT POLICY: SNAKE ATTACK The following is from the US Government Peace Corps Manual for its volunteers who work in the Amazon Jungle. It tells what to do in case you are attacked by an anaconda. Now an anaconda is the largest snake in the world. It is a relative of the boa constrictor, it grows to thirty-five feet in length and weighs between three and four hundred pounds at the maximum. This is what the manual said: 1. If you are attacked by an anaconda, do not run. The snake is faster than you are. 2. Lie flat on the ground. Put your arms tight against your sides, your legs tight against one another. 3. Tuck your chin in. 4. The snake will come and begin to nudge and climb over your body. 5. Do not panic. (emphasis added) 6. After the snake has examined you, it will begin to swallow you from the feet and - always from the end. Permit the snake to swallow your feet and ankles. Do not panic. (emphasis added) 7. The snake will now begin to suck your legs into its body. You must lie perfectly still. This will take a long time. 8. When the snake has reached your knees slowly and with as little movement as possible, reach down, take your knife and very gently slide it into the side of the snake's mouth between the edge of its mouth and your leg, then suddenly rip upwards, severing the snake's head. 9. Be sure you have your knife. 10. Be sure your knife is sharp.

Good grief Marcia - where did you find that!!!!!!! It made me crawl just reading it. Are they really serious? I mean, this isn't a spoof is it?

Maggie, I just dug through all of my email outgoing and incoming and in mailboxes and I cannot find where I got it. But, it WAS forwarded to me without omment, so I rather think it is parody. I certainly hope it is!!!

The mind boggles if it isn't. It rather reminds me of a children's colouring book I once saw about missionary life in South America, which had one poor chap being swallowed by one of these snakes, and his friend cutting the snake open to let him out! - for children??????

Gadzooks! Reality check for little children's survival?! Way too grim for me. In a coloring book, yet! It would give me nightmares!

i'da panicked way before the snake even got close enough to me to think about swallowing me feet and ankles first. *yuck*

That cool only Indiana Jones can muster. I am NOT Indy anything! How about dying of fright first?!

speaking of indy jones, supposedly another movie is in the works. don't have specifics, just heard of it....

Gotta had Harrison Ford or it won't fly! Round up the nasties and creepies from your most skin-crawling topics...Hollywood might just be calling you soon.

What I don't get is: how do people MANAGE to get swallowed by snakes?? I mean a person can probably WALK faster than such a huge snake. And anyway if the snake is big enough to swallow a man it can be safely assumed that one doesn't have to stand 10cm away in order to see the damned thing. So, how does it happen?? I know, they probably try to feed the things peanuts. And you know how it is ... you give it a peanut and it takes head, tits AND knees.

Actually, I was hoping it was an apocryphal sort of story which makes a good tale but did not really happen - sort of like an Urban Legend. I am clueless to know how a live healthy person would get swallowed, as well. And,since you are the resident snake expert, I trust your opinion on the issue. Guess you give them an inch and they take the whole thing!

haha!! ree, i almost sat on a copperhead as a kid (it was just a baby though)...my dad spotted it and told me to hold up whilst he took a knife to it.

WOW! That's scary, Wolfie!! Brrrrrrr... I can still understand not seeing a copperhead, but the snakes that are reputed to eat humans are Brazilian pythons - and it's not a myth either. Brazilian pythons are so huge, though, I cannot imagine a person overlooking it. I mean, God, one would have to be blind and WEARING a blind AND armless AND legless to be so totally unaware of it's presence as to invite that huge snail to gobble you up on land. And a plain imbicile to go into those snake infested waters where the pythons are in their element and rather a good deal faster than on land.

i can't imagine walking through brazil and not seeing a snake that size! would definitely cause this wolf to turn tail and run!!

How about "I cannot imagine walking through Brazil. Period!" Everything there is bigger and faster and more hungry than anywhere else on earth, I think. (I wonder what it is like to be slowly digested...)

no, don't wonder that!! you might find out, euw!!

Just what I was thinking...don't want to know...don't need to know...don't tell me!

Posting this without comment (but I am thinking of some really snippy ones) Caught Smuggling Snake in Underpants PARIS (Reuters) - French police on Tuesday caught a man trying to sneak through customs at a Paris airport with a snake hidden in his underpants, an airport spokeswoman said. The 30-year-old Frenchman, who was trying to smuggle the 16 inch boa into Roissy airport from Colombia, was caught out after a sniffer dog latched on to the reptile's scent through his bulging trousers, she said. The man told customs officials he wanted to add the snake export of which is outlawed as an endangered species to his reptile collection. The snake was confiscated and placed in the temporary care of airport officials.

T had a ferret put down his trousers once - I had the photo to prove it but he tore it up so I couldn't send it!

All I can say about the snake story is -- "tres bizarre". It's too strange and really funny.

Wonder if French egos are as large as their imaginations. He though a 16-incher would go unnoticed as part of his natural anatomy?! Yeah...sure...

It would seem that Frenchmen are, no doubt, much to their mortification, not much different in that respect than their American counterparts. Must be a universal Y-chromsome linked trait.

Ah Yes! My resident male did not think the Frenchman was very smart. I guess it is too close to the most important Significant Other in their lives - sorta like THE best friend who's been with them since childhood and all that?! Yup! It's that "why" chromome.

...chromosome...sheesh!