Photos of Local critters that I hate. Sometimes hate is good

[Raven]

Cottonmouths are the only snake I have ever has chase me. It was duck season so it ended up getting some #4 tungsten or steel shot.

I've been chased, too, when I was a land surveyor's instrument man, on a creek on 98. It would have made a good episode of Faces Of Death. "Death By 100 Flailing Plumb Bob Wacks"

 

[Raven]

I have killed about 2 dozen cottonmouths in the last 12 months since we bought our new place. Even found a small one complete with the yellow tail 4 steps up on my pool deck! My daughter found it under her boogie board.

On the Chipola River a few years ago I killed three moccasins in one day. By the end of the canoe trip I was scared to get out of the boat! The water level was up and it was mating season, so it was a double recipe for disaster. Maybe you have something similar happening at your property

 

[Raven]

The most I've ever been nervous about an animal.... was when the five foot long turtle I'd just caught started hauling me off of the sandbar, and then a girl I knew thought it would be cute to get in this things face with a camera as its tail was slipping out of my hands and I'm ready to let it go. Off camera she's standing in the water right in front of it. Thing had a head like a basketball!

 

[Raptor727]

Found this little guy while moving the pool scared me pretty good when I flipped it and seen the red hourglass

 

[wildrider666]

We have the lesser known Brown Widow Spider down here too.

 

[fl57caveman]

according to the world's foremost spider expert, my lovely wife, there are only 4 kinds of spiders in the entire world;

black widows
brown recluses
tarantulas

and dead ones....

 

[FrommerStop]

We have the lesser known Brown Widow Spider down here too.

Something did bite me on a finger once while handling a concrete block. I never saw what did it, but my finger was numb for a day or so. I suspect a spider of some sort.

 

[SAWMAN]

A Brown Recluse spider can be worse than a Black Widow. --- SAWMAN

 

[FrommerStop]

On the Chipola River a few years ago I killed three moccasins in one day. By the end of the canoe trip I was scared to get out of the boat! The water level was up and it was mating season, so it was a double recipe for disaster. Maybe you have something similar happening at your property

High water does make snakes move. I think the ones that I get are looking for good hunting habitat. Moccasins will often leave the water and live like a copperhead that they are closely related to in the uplands.
I had a bulldozer operator tell me of one pasture that he cleared of stumps and swore each stump had a water moccasin living in it.
Water moccasins are voracious eaters and will migrate looking for a better place, even in the middle of the day. Once they find a place that they like, they will hang out in it. I had a mature adult once was living around a pile of pine logs that I had seen for months and did not realized what it was. As I walked the fence line, I would just the see the tail of a snake disappear into the underbrush. I was mowing along the fence line one day and saw the full snake. I was in better shape then. I got out of the small snapper with a machete in my hand and as I ran past the snake left the machete buried in the snake and the ground severing its spine and I kept going. That snake was foraging in the back yards of my neighbors. Normally they are not aggressive, but if you do not know that they are there is when you get bitten.
I had a young one once stand on its tail when it saw one of my dogs approach it. I put a 9mm through its mouth making it into a good snake. I like having my dogs around since they can be good at spotting snakes for me.

 

[Ricochet]

I am having second thoughts on moving to the Panhandle.
This is a horrible thread for a woman to see.

 

[MarkS]

Stopped at Kennedy Bridge on Blackwater Rv. 10 or 12 years ago when the river was in flood stage. Walked into the edge of the woods 5 yard or so to take a leak and found a moccasin at eye level, all of a sudden I found I didn't need to take a leak right then. A 3' cottonmouth staring me in the eye at arms length made me forget all about the urge to go.

 

[FrommerStop]

I am having second thoughts on moving to the Panhandle.
This is a horrible thread for a woman to see.

Move to a subdivision that is in the middle of subdivisions and there will not be a moccasin problem.

 

[FLT]

I never go out of my way to kill a snake, but I never pass up a chance to kill one either.

 

[FrommerStop]

I never go out of my way to kill a snake, but I never pass up a chance to kill one either.

Goods snakes I never kill. Around the house any pit viper is to be killed. In the middle of a swamp I would let them be. God put them on earth to live in swamps and not around my house.

 

[FLT]

I don’t kill the harmless ones.

 

[rockb]

according to the world's foremost spider expert, my lovely wife, there are only 4 kinds of spiders in the entire world;

black widows
brown recluses
tarantulas

and dead ones....

Your wife is kinder than mine. She only has two.

Dead
Ones that should be dead.

 

[fl57caveman]

Your wife is kinder than mine. She only has two.

Dead
Ones that should be dead.

LOL


my dearly departed mother used to say there was only 4 kinds of snakes she did not like...

big ones
little ones
live ones &
dead ones..

 

[Raven]

Me and my wife and kids were camping creekside at Adventures Unlimited, back when Bubba was in diapers and Sissy was barely in kindergarten. We woke up early and I went wading. I was worried about broken glass underwater, being in an established long term campground, so I'd put my canoeing boots on first. Thank God. I'd walked right past a half foot baby moccasin in the grass at the water's edge and not seen it. I turned around to say something to the family and saw it hit the water and come right for me under the water and I jumped and pinned it right to the floor and watched it wiggling and biting. I hollered for a knife, thinking machete, and bless my little girl's heart, she throws me her Girl Scout pocket knife...... talk about a humbling experience. I was so proud of her! At the same time realizing some irony. I'd taught her to keep a pocket knife and that she could handle just about all daily business with her scout knife, Macgyver style, and here I was, Super Dad in her eyes, being put on the spot by the little girl to handle business and do battle with a poisonous snake with her 3" blade! I swallowed a little pride and accepted that challenge and really carefully dispatched the thing underwater, point blank. At arguably the most poisonous time in a moccasins life cycle, when they're most likely to dump a full load into the bite, here I was proving it to the family that Dad wasn't scared and that a scout knife was all you really needed. "Stupid, stupid, stupid" screaming inside my head. And then "hey, look at me, I did it." Moral of the story Ricochet: bring enough knife.... everywhere you go in the swamp that is the whole state of Florida. My first moccasin I killed after coming home from active duty was right downtown Milton at the corner of the Short Stop/Shell station and the bike trail. Full grown snake in plain view of the police station, town hall, etc. etc., and I'm wailing on it with a brand new dull $5 flea market "Hecho in Mexico" machete that I'd bought the first weekend home at the Pea Ridge Flea Market, because I knew it would be needed, because the whole dang state of Florida is a swamp. Be ready.

 

[RackinRay]

The most I've ever been nervous about an animal.... was when the five foot long turtle I'd just caught started hauling me off of the sandbar, and then a girl I knew thought it would be cute to get in this things face with a camera as its tail was slipping out of my hands and I'm ready to let it go. Off camera she's standing in the water right in front of it. Thing had a head like a basketball!

Tell me you did not marry her....did you? LOL

 

[Raven]

Tell me you did not marry her....did you? LOL

No sir! Not that one!