I’m the “snake wrangler” in our family. When we lived in our first house, somehow a garden snake got into the basement and confronted my wife when she was doing laundry. I happend to be home at the time, and for some reason, I knew from the scream that it had to be a snake. Even a boy growing up in Queens learns to handle garden snakes, I just scooped him up and tossed him in the flower garden.
One time, however, my daughter, about five at the time, came running into the front yard panting, “Get Daddy, get Daddy.” I knew that Mommy was the go to person for skin knees, or other emergencies, so I knew that there was only one possible emergency that required Daddy. Seems a hog-nose snake had come out of the wood pile next to the swing set where she had been playing. I wasn’t familar with the species and the SOB went into his king cobra act. I still scooped him up, but we writhed and twisted like crazy and bit me right though my gardening glove. That was it! No more Mr. Niceguy. I tossed him about twenty feet into the flower garden. (Normally, I’d just put them down gently.)
Trouser
Stay out of Harlem
If there is ever a snake in my house, we will have to move. PERIOD.
An old Mennonite guy once told me that on the farm he grew up on he and his brothers used to grab black snakes by the tail and snap them like towels in a locker room. Killed the snakes instantly.
One time I was standing down by the creek in the front of my property in hip waders and a big black water snake like the one pictured shot right between my feet. He moved faster than I would have expected.
Down at that same creek my brother thought he saw a snake’s tail sticking out of a hole along the bank and when he grabbed it and pulled it out it turned out to be a muskrat.