Strange Snake Stories, Myths and Nonsense

[guidofatherof5]

I was in a store buying tipalia for my snakes when the young man waiting on me asked if if was for my snakes( I buy a lot there) I told him yes. He asked how he can get the garter snakes to stop biting the tomatoes in his garden. He said they are biting the tomatoes and drinking the juice. Never heard that one before.:D

There's got to to many other stories out there.

[infernalis]

I have never heard that one from anyone either.

All I have is your typical "farmers tales" that spotted adders are "poisonous"

There is no such animal, they are talking about eastern milk snakes, and they are harmless.

[ProXimuS]

That tomato one is weird.....:p

There's always the "snakes are slimey" myth.

[Mommy2many]

Stop blaming the snakes....

[Invisible Snake]

I've heard that snakes are evil (from religious ppl).

[kerensa]

How about the old Vermont tale that they will bite their tail form a hoop and roll away? does that count?

[guidofatherof5]

Yes it does. Thanks

[kerensa]

another old Vermont story is that snakes shed their skin when changing into something else. No one was ever able to tell me what however. you hear lots of interesting things listening to ancient old time Vermonters...

another one is that water moccasins hunt swimmers.

another is snakes in the barn will keep away illness.

another is that snakes suck eggs and that is why some birds kill them.

That is all the strange old sayings/stories about them I remember right now.

[setfree]

I've heard that snakes are evil (from religious ppl).

The story behind that is that lucifer (Satan) was in the form of a serpent when he tempted eve to eat the fruit of the tree of "the knowledge of good and evil". So God cursed the serpent to slither on its belly "eating" the dust of the ground. That is why they have no legs.

That's from the Bible.


P.S. they are not evil.... THEY ARE AWSOME!

[katach]

I get that all the time "Snakes are evil", I just calmly say no, you are just ignorant. :)

Now cat... they ARE evil. :D

[-MARWOLAETH-]

Having no legs isn't a curse to snakes it was a huge evolutionary advantage to their subterranean ancestors who where so successful that they diversified into into the snakes of today.Theirs some weird stuff in the bible.:):p

[kibakiba]

I had one medical taxi driver who asked me if I had pets and I told her I had 12 snakes(at least I did, at the time) and she stepped on the gas and then on the breaks... She told me I was going to end up with my house, or myself, being possessed. In my opinion, she was the one who was possessed. She could have gotten us in a crash doing that.

[-MARWOLAETH-]

She told me I was going to end up with my house, or myself, being possessed. In my opinion, she was the one who was possessed.Yeh possessed by the ghosts of all the pinkies and worms your snakes have eaten:p:)

[Stefan-A]

The story behind that is that lucifer (Satan) was in the form of a serpent
According to christian tradition. It's not actually in the bible.

In the bible, the serpent is also described as "more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made". As far as I'm concerned, that's rating snakes pretty high.


So God cursed the serpent to slither on its belly "eating" the dust of the ground. That is why they have no legs.
He also decreed that there should be enmity between snakes and humans. And the part about eating dust doesn't have any quotation marks in Genesis 3:14. ;)

[Selkielass]

I have had people tell me that snakes 'sting' with their forked tongues, or sometimes with their tails. That's why they are whip snakes- they will whip you with their stinging tails.
Blue racers run faster than, and will chase people.

Once, a snake (or toad) got bricked into the cornerstone of an important building, and many decades later, when the building was torn down, the snake was found, still alive, among the artifacts placed in the cornerstone.

I love myths and urban legends!

[jaleely]

i have heard all of these before! except the tomato lol
I did wonder if they could eat tomato worms, though. i've definitely been seeing them eat slugs, that's for sure!

my dad told me snakes were evil, this week. He thinks they are mean and like to bite. He also says that god cursed them to crawl and eat dirt. I pointed out...didn't they crawl before? or if he took their legs, that would just make it a lizard..but there are still lizards...so...

[-MARWOLAETH-]

Theirs a tribe in southern Africa that believes that the twig snake(Thelotornis capensis) can impale you like a spear.Lol

[EasternGirl]

My Mexican sister-in-law told me that her mother, who lives in Mexico, always knows when someone is going to get sick because there will be a snake outside of the person's house hanging around. If they see a snake near the house...someone is going to get very ill. Man, with twelve of them in my house...if that were true, I'd be dead by now.

[Stefan-A]

My Mexican sister-in-law told me that her mother, who lives in Mexico, always knows when someone is going to get sick because there will be a snake outside of the person's house hanging around. If they see a snake near the house...someone is going to get very ill. Man, with twelve of them in my house...if that were true, I'd be dead by now.
There could be some vague truth to it. Snakes are attracted by rats and rats spread diseases.

[GarField000]

I would be dead by now then.
I have 23 thamnophis, 12 corns, 14 baby corns, and still about 70 baby thamnophis ........ hmmm.

Still feeling very good :D

[EasternGirl]

Yeah...but I got the idea it was more like a wives' tale thing...she said something about how if anyone in the house is ill...they know there must be a snake around...so if they go and find the snake and remove it....the person gets better or something like that. They are from the Mexican old country and they are Azteca...I think they have a lot of weird wives' tales that they believe.

[ProXimuS]

"Snakes hear through vibrations in the ground
When you run away from a snake
it will chase after you
because your feet hitting the ground tickles the
snake’s belly
and makes it feel good"

I read that on a site that I randomly came across. I actually typed in snake intestines(just being curious:p) on google and some how came across that:rolleyes: Here's the link Cave Text: Snakes (http://cavetext.blogspot.com/2010/08/snakes.html). Cool lookin snake though....

[ProXimuS]

I found a few myths in a book that I wanted to share:

-A snake will not die until the sun goes down.
-People in North Lincolnshire say that if you wear a snake skin around your head you can cure a headache.
-An old Cornish tale says a snake won't approach anyhting made of ash wood.
-A ring made in the shape of a snake is said to bring long life and good health to it's owner.
-Central Europeans belived that if a woman pulled out one of her hairs at a certain Moon sign she could turn it into a snake by placing it in water. Another similar belief is that if a horse hair is dropped into water it will become a snake.
-Snakes have bad eyesight and can't see forward.
-If a snake swallows the spit of someone who has fasted, it will die.
-Certain snakes, called hoop snakes, take their tail in their mouth and destroy trees, animals, and people by stinging them with the tail.(Something similar to this has already been posted, but this is slightly different.)

[Stefan-A]

I found a few myths in a book that I wanted to share:

-A snake will not die until the sun goes down.
Heard a variant of that as a kid; A dead snake won't stop moving until the sun goes down. And the person who told me, told it as a myth.

[d_virginiana]

I found a few myths in a book that I wanted to share:
-People in North Lincolnshire say that if you wear a snake skin around your head you can cure a headache.


There's actually a little truth in this, but it has nothing to do with it being a snake. Some cultures (one in India I believe?) have a similar story about tying a rope made of goat hair around your head.
If someone has a migraine, tying a piece of string or whatever tightly around the head can actually help, since it changes the bloodflow.

[ConcinusMan]

I was in a store buying tipalia for my snakes when the young man waiting on me asked if if was for my snakes( I buy a lot there) I told him yes. He asked how he can get the garter snakes to stop biting the tomatoes in his garden. He said they are biting the tomatoes and drinking the juice. Never heard that one before.:D

There's got to to many other stories out there.

Sounds to me like he has slugs. There's probably a lot of garters around eating the slugs, and he's blaming the tomato damage on the snakes. It's even possible that he saw a garter eating a slug on one of the tomatoes and misinterpreted what he saw.


I've heard that snakes are evil (from religious ppl).

If they would just read their Bible, they would know that Satan took the form of a serpent. Serpents aren't Evil, they are God's creation. It's Satan that's evil. Personally, I don't believe in evil. No creature is evil, in spite of our perception that some are.


Heard a variant of that as a kid; A dead snake won't stop moving until the sun goes down. And the person who told me, told it as a myth.

The way I heard it is that a snake won't die until the sun goes down, even if you chop it's head off. I read that stems from the fact that snakes will sometimes remain animated for period of time, long after they're dead. Makes sense.

Some local nonsense...

People around here call northwestern garters yellow racer, red racer, etc. depending on their stripe color. They're not racers, obviously. I have to explain to them that there are racers here, but they are solid grey. No stripes.

[Ctah_Lu]

Yeah...but I got the idea it was more like a wives' tale thing...she said something about how if anyone in the house is ill...they know there must be a snake around...so if they go and find the snake and remove it....the person gets better or something like that. They are from the Mexican old country and they are Azteca...I think they have a lot of weird wives' tales that they believe.

Hi, I live in Mexico and the myths about the snakes are very crazy, but that kind of myths are the stories of the old people (most times ignorant because they didnt go to school and some are very religious).

The most strange story that I heard was from an old lady that affirm that the snakes are attracted by the houses where newborns live, then they enter the house in the night and suck the milk form the mother's breast and they put their tail in the mout of the baby to avoid that cry.:confused:

Some of the myts about the snakes are really, really bizarre.

[-MARWOLAETH-]

^^^Now that one takes the crazy biscuit:D

[thamneil]

My grandpa is full of these. He lived in Africa long before I was born.

One of his best stories is the time he ran over a rock python and the snake flattened out and moved away unharmed.

He also supposedly ran over a mamba which coiled around his tire and then escaped unharmed.

There's also something about a puff adder. Can't quite remember that one.

[d_virginiana]

A really common one around here is that if there is a snake in your house, you can bake a chocolate pie and hide it in a cabinet, and the snake will come to it. Everyone thinks it's because the snakes are interested in the pie. It actually does work since a fresh pie in a cold house, hidden in a cabinet is the equivalent of setting out a heat source and hide :p
A good superstition I hear a lot from older people is that you will have bad luck if you kill a black snake. I think it's supposed to refer to black ratsnakes but no one knows the difference, so racers usually get saved too.