Posted on 08/28/2015 2:26:49 PM PDT by PROCON
A Lake Elsinore man could lose his hand after being bitten by a rattlesnake he was holding and taking pictures with, he and his mother said Thursday.
Alex Gomez found the 4-foot-long snake in a field behind his home on Monday and decided to pick it up.
The 36-year-old could be seen holding the snake and even wrapping it around his neck in photographs provided to KTLA by his mother.
At some point after the photos were taken, the rattlesnake attacked Gomez, biting him in the hand.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
Are there any Freepers in their 60s or 70s that can verify this?
I'm 65 and I don't remember adults back in the 1950s and '60s being this dumb. Most of the men (our dads) were WWII combat vets. They weren't stupid.
This boomer agrees with you. There have always been dumb people, I suppose, but, these days, they seem to be proud of their stupidity.
Be nice if you could let us know where Lake Elsinore is. Only Elsinore I know of is in “Hamlet”.
Yep. We’ve seen cottonmouths, only not nearly as many as rattlesnakes. Too many of the rattlers have been killed off; now we’re left with cottonmouths & copperheads, the silent ones. I think it’s bad when things get out of balance. So far, we seem to get more harmless snakes in the garden. - When my dad was a kid; he & his sisters & brothers were walking single file in their farmyard. Daddy & the bigger kids walked past a certain point. The little ones were trailing along behind. A big old cottonmouth came crawling out, the kids started screaming. Daddy grabbed up a big old rock, circled back around & clobbered the h-e-double hockey sticks out of that snake & killed it. (It was just one of the experiences that prepared him to face the Nazis during WWII.) He also had to hunt wild game to help put food on the table for his family & was a pretty good shot.
Lake Elsinore, CA is a community SE of LA :-)
Yup, a double meaning, that Gadsden flag :-)
Man - those big boys like to hide in the Palmetto scrubs. Looks like you got a healthy one.
This much smaller one was killed by my dog.
How did your dog kill the snake without getting bit?
He was very quick. Most dogs grab a snake in the middle and then shake it to pieces. Old Smokey did it differently. He would grab them behind the head and just clamp down until they died.
Thank you for all the replies, gentlemen.
I think it's fascinating comparing one generation to another.
Back in the 70s, I just can't imagine my dad, his brothers, or his friends handling a rattlesnake like a toy and taking a "selfie." That kind of stupid, irresponsible, silly trivial nonsense just wasn't in their makeup.
The first 2 things I learned as a child were 1. don't get in the road! and 2. Snakes are bad!
I knew not to play with snakes when I was around 4 years old.
Because people this stupid never used to survive to adulthood. Advances in medical sciences + a much more risk conscience/risk adverse society have permitted people like this to survive well past the years that nature would have allowed of her own accord.
I'm fascinated with stupid people and the stupid things they do. It's a guilty pleasure.
Some people are interested in science or space, others like to study history or finance.
But for me, it's dumb people.
When I see a dummy like the guy in the video, I don't even relate to him as a human. He's like an exotic animal or even a space alien to me. I know, it's terrible.
Endlessly fascinating.
Bummer
Often, if the piece does not tell you, posters put the state’s abbreviation in parentheses after or before the title.
Not anymore, they all slithered across the border for all the free stuff the ‘rat’s are handing out.
That is a great picture. How nice that a fr thread came up which made your posting it relevent to the topic.
That plus another thing which has been expurgated from our society: humiliation. In the past, let's posit that this guy may - *may* have survived, minus a hand. For the rest of his life, he would have served as a warning to others, and been a walking, teachable object to youngsters. "Looky there! You see that guy? He lost his hand - you know why? Cuz' he was STOOPID enough to play with a rattler! You wanna lose yer hand, boy?" If that were attempted today, the parent would be sued for disrespecting the disabled.
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