I'm a father as well and obviously a pet owner... I've taught my daughter not to fear but to learn and understand. Do snakes demand respect? Absolutely. Do they deserve to be feared? Nope.
My daughter and Brownie, one of her snakes...
Posted on 07/21/2014 10:28:55 AM PDT by njslim
An anaconda snake is loose in New Jersey's Lake Hopatcong, and a local reptile expert said Friday he's breaking his silence after animal control told him to keep quiet about the dangerous reptile. "I've known it was an anaconda since last week, but I was told by animal control and state police not to say anything," Gerald Andrejcak, who works for Common Sense for Animals, told The New Jersey Herald. "Officials were afraid that if it came out that the snake was an anaconda it would cause mass hysteria. It needed to come out, it is a public safety issue."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
There is a higher rate of attack, bite and even death with a dog than with a snake. Snakes can be big and scary but they’re not like dogs... and don’t get me wrong, I love both dogs and snakes. Snakes are not the monsters you think they are.
But actually, the name has a much longer histoire than that:
From Wikipedia:
Pyewacket was one of the familiar spirits of a witch detected by the "witchfinder general" Matthew Hopkins in March 1644 in the town of Manningtree, Essex, England. Hopkins claimed he spied on the witches as they held their meeting close by his house, and heard them mention the name of a local woman. She was arrested and deprived of sleep for four nights, at the end of which she confessed and called out the names of her familiars, describing the forms in which they should appear. They were:
* Holt, "who came in like a white kittling"
* Jarmara, "who came in like a fat Spaniel without any legs at all"
* Vinegar Tom, "who was like a long-legg'd greyhound, with a head like an Oxe"
* Sacke and Sugar, "like a black Rabbet"
* Newes, "like a Polecat"
* Elemanzer, Pyewacket, Peck in the Crown, Grizzel, Greedigut, described as imps
Hopkins claims he and nine other witnesses saw the first five of these, which appeared in the forms described by the witch. Only the first of these was in the form of a cat; the next two were dogs, and the others were a black rabbit and a polecat – so Pyewacket was, presumably, not a cat's name. As for the other familiars, Hopkins says only that they were such that "no mortall could invent." The incident is described in Hopkins's pamphlet "The Discovery of Witches" (1647).
In the Hollywood film Bell, Book and Candle (1958) Pyewacket is the name of the Siamese cat/familiar of Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak). In the 1967 children's novel Pyewacket the title character and protagonist is an alley cat. In the 2008 computer game A Vampyre Story Pyewacket is the name of the familiar of the (missing, presumed dead) sorceress that used to own the castle where the game begins. She is also a Siamese cat.
My youngest daughter kept a rock snake as a pet for several years. It was by far the easiest pet I’ve ever dealt with — keep it watered, feed it once a week or so, handle it every few days, and just watch it be cool the rest of the time.
Unfortunately, she also learned a lesson in responsibility and the consequences of not closing the door of the aquarium, so she no longer has a pet and somewhere in our walls there is very expensive snake skeleton. Besides that incident, the snake was a perfect pet.
I don’t think snakes are monsters, I just thought the claim that dogs and cats are more dangerous was a bit odd, to say the least especially given the topic of this thread.
Give me a golden retriever over a 24 foot (or even 6 foot) Anaconda any day. Call it personal preference if you wish.
And I’m a cat person.
You believe you need the government to tell you what you are allowed to own?
Although they are looked down upon by most of the herp community “purists”, some people have successfully created “hybrids” *in captivity*.
That is to say, the chosen genus are given the opportunity to breed with only a ~different~ genus in the same family.
[ie, Colubridae, Boidae, etc]
In the wild, this would be *extremely* unlikely.
In fact, snake keepers are careful to not house different species together because cannibalism is the usual result.
I'm a father as well and obviously a pet owner... I've taught my daughter not to fear but to learn and understand. Do snakes demand respect? Absolutely. Do they deserve to be feared? Nope.
My daughter and Brownie, one of her snakes...
I know...I was just funnin’ ya.
It’s a grand name for a Ball Python.
[and SO much better than the usual “Monty”]
:)
It’s right next to the word “musket”.
Let’s not get on the myth of anacondas and pythons breeding together in the wild. UGH.
Yes, different species and some of the same species can and will cannibalize. Never house king snakes together unless you want to lose one of them.
I’m one of the purists. I love doing morphs but not hybrids. We’re breeding tarahumara boas in the next year or two. I’m sure someone will say that they’re dangerous and evil as well. Sigh.
Did you not notice that *after* the owner of the pet store was arrested on suspicion of murder that that story disappeared down the rabbit hole?
First came the abundance of photos he took of the two boys running around nearly naked in his shop, after hours.
Then the media lost interest.
I guess the biggest problem is irresponsible pet owners.
I have seen several programs on TV (Nat Geo, Animal Planet) that say this has become a major problem in South Florida where a number of pet owners have released giant African Rock Pythons and Burmese Pythons into the wild (often the Everglades) because the snakes got too large for them to care for.
A released python was even found with an alligator inside of it.
As is usually the case, it is humans who have proven to be the real problem, not understanding how big some of these snakes can get and how expensive and involved it is to properly care and feed them, to insure that they have big and safe enclosures. Snakes are notorious escape artists as I’m sure you know.
Many people in that area of N.J. hunt & fish and would know what to do with a shotgun. The area is not Newark. Yet.
Having lived in the northeast my whole life, I have to say that actually seeing a snake in the wild has always been a far too rare treat for me. But when it happens, I always feel especially blessed.
One time when visiting my mom in Florida, I saw a water moccasin hiding in the grass near the pool. I was blessed that time because I only barely missed stepping on it. But it was still cool, and I stood over it and watched it for a while in awe.
One time in the 1970s, I had a job working in a printing shop, and the widow who owned the business had a lovely home with a pool. She came in freaked out one day because she had seen a few snakes by her pool. She paid me a full day's pay me to leave the shop and go to her house to catch the snakes. I caught a few garter snakes, which I brought back and released in the woods across the street from the shop. That was a fun day's work for me, I must say, although it was somewhat marred by an unanticipated bee sting.
I have to admit, though, that I once saw a TV show about a couple whose house was completely infested with garter snakes -- to the point where there were hundreds and hundreds of them jammed on top of each other behind the walls. What's more, garter snakes give off a musky scent, and the house shown apparently reeked from the collective stink.
Ultimately, the only practical solution was to tear down the house and move. So OK, that was a bit creepy, even for me.
Still, I still consider myself lucky to see a wild snake. I always related to the excitement that the late Steve Irwin would express when ever he found a wild snake, although the ones he found were usually poisonous. Crikey!!
Never mind that one lays eggs and the other is live-bearing.
:D
Good luck with your breeding project.
So much focus is put on morphs now that localities seem to get left behind.
I know you were just funnin’ me. ;-)
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