the one that got away;

[PINJOHN]

The title says it all really, after watching a fishing program on discovery and then reading steves adventures on his herping weekend [thanks for sharing that steve really enjoyed it ] i put the two together[ in the cerebral sense] and thought there must be some interesting adventures out there, snakes almost but not quite captured; unusual colours, large size, perhaps popping up in places not expected, perhaps one you have been trying to capture in some location known only to you. share the adventure even if not the location and we wont even mind a little exaggeration. HOW BIG, O COME ON.

[mustang]

when in 8th grade i went with this 6th grader named jefforey we went into the woods lookn for snakes (first time on realy lookn for snakes tall grasss and all) and we came across this powerline connected to a tree and we went to go see it....the i looked down right before i was going to walk over this rope...and i noticed "wow this rope has a nice....pattern.....holy $hIT!" i couldnt see the head or the tail and it looked like a rattle snake...when i said $hIT!! apperently it was the magic word to bring your friend back and when he has walking over to me a head (as well as 2 extra feet of snake came out of the grass) and we waited for it to start moving to look at the tail to see if it was a rattle snake. it wasnt so our attitude changed from catious to GRAB IT!!! it started sprinleriring like it was pulln a jessie ownes trick on us and went 3ft up a tree showing teeth and everything (aperantly my memory is fuzzy cuz it had a bluish white mouth (like a moccasin)(which i knew it wasnt one of)and front fangs (like few/no non venomous snake in our area)) then it went down under the tree into a hole...i convinced my friend to stickhis glove sheethed hand down the hole....he said it was DEEP. so i tried ...i couldnt feel the bottom. so after waiting we went walking further and found an axe, YES AN AXE!!!! now what do you suppose two naive kids who want to catch a snake under a tree would do with that axe...we tried guttn down the tree but it was a blunt axe and it stopped goin through the tree when it was a fith of the way through it...if youv ever used a blunt axe repeatedly for a good half hour (a heavy heavy axe for that matter) knew exasctly how we fealt...imagin swinging a golfclub you know that little shockwave you get well multiply it by about 300 and thats what we did for half an hour then we had to give up and go home. (with my new axe i was going to be the proud owner of...NOT!!!!! apperently mom and dad were the new owners of a blunt axe.) i believe it was a texas ratsnake itwas 4-6 ft. long. thats one of my stories :)

[guidofatherof5]

Your thread reminds of me on an incident involving our girl Lucky(T.radix, female). She escaped and I caught her as the last 1/3rd of he body was going behind the drywall. I held on to her in an attempt to keep the rest of her from going behind the wall. With my other hand(non dominant hand) I punched the drywall out and retrieved the wayward snake
He's a link to the actual thread I made.
http://www.thamnophis.com/forum/general-talk/5231-lucky-again.html

[mustang]

Your thread reminds of me on an incident involving our girl Lucky(T.radix, female). She escaped and I caught her as the last 1/3rd of he body was going behind the drywall. I held on to her in an attempt to keep the rest of her from going behind the wall. With my other hand(non dominant hand) I punched the drywall out and retrieved the wayward snake
He's a link to the actual thread I made.
http://www.thamnophis.com/forum/general-talk/5231-lucky-again.html
i had to do the same for checker but i didnt punch the hole he was hiding and grabbed the last 8th of him and started pulling him out.

[MlizGr]

Haha! I actually almost had a garter snake when I was a kid. Don't remember where I found it, how I caught it, or even what it looked like at this point, but I was the kind of kid who had whatever pets I could get away with. We even had ducks and rabbits in the back yard. However, I carried that snake all the way home, my mother took one look at it and told me to take it outside and kill it! So I took it about a block away and let it go.

Funny, she had almost the exact same reaction to the fuzzy orange kitten I brought home. Mom was well known for her dislike of cats.

[Selkielass]

How about one that didn't get away?

When I was in college, I worked at a summer camp near Holly Michigan called Camp Wathana. One morning I was walking a large group of girls from the dining hall to the archery range, so we took a path that ran next to a swamp.

This swamp was known to have Massagua rattlers in it, so I warned the girls to watch where they were stepping and to make plenty of noise to scare away any rattlers who might be having a morning sunbath. This was greeted *mostly* with enthusiasm, as was any excuse for noise, but one girl was still concerned about big mean snakes.

I started to give her the standard talk about most snaked being very shy, and really quite pretty, when something on a branch by the trailside caught my eye.
I said 'Here, take a look at this..." and reached up and caught a little newborn garter or ribbon snake that was sunning itself on a twig 5 or 6 feet above ground level.

It was as if I'd pulled a rabbit out of a hat! Shock, amazement, and gradually curiosity as they got over their fear and realized how cute this little shoestring of a snake was. After a while, we continued to archery, and the snakelet was released back into the brush, but for the rest of the summer I had a reputation as a counselor who could pull reptiles out of thin air.

[Mix]

Now that is a cool story! :)

[MlizGr]

I have to agree. The best I managed during the summer I worked at a summer camp was killing the leaches that the girls came out of the lake with. Oh... And catching the bats and birds that got into the buildings to let them go. Looots of lessons about how we instantly wash our hands after handling wild animals there.

[Selkielass]

Garter snake= goodwill ambassador of the snake world.
I have never since caught or even seen a snake sunning itself on a branch like that. The timing still amazes me.

[mustang]

It was as if I'd pulled a rabbit out of a hat!
i would rather pull a rabbit out of a python out of a hat....or a cat out of a python out of a hat hahaha