PE - camping in snake country

[j'lynn yeates]

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-periodencampments at ansteorra.org
> [mailto:owner-periodencampments at ansteorra.org]On Behalf Of Corun
> MacAnndra
> Sent: Monday, October 02, 2000 05:58
> To: periodencampments at ansteorra.org
> Subject: RE: PE - camping in snake country
> 
> That must have raised some eyebrows, especially for those folks who
> believed the rope would deter the snake.

.. pont of the lesson was to replace the concepts of fear, myth and
reliance on "charms & magic" with basic common sense.  usually, if
you remember that you are out of your native human habitat (the comfy
urban chair) and intruding in some other species native habitat and
come as a guest with your eyes open and soem basic common sense under
the belt, you will rarely have problems 
 
> I seem to recall that there is one species of American snake that
> will chase humans. When I was young I would often visit my cousins
> in Tennessee and once we were chase by this snake. It was either a
> copperhead or a water moccasin, I can't recall. I don't recall that
> we did anything other than walk across the cow field to a  pond to
> go fishing and didn't deliberately seek or annoy this snake, but
> suddenly there it was and there we went. Any comments on this?

mocc's ... can be nasty, territorial, brutes.  only time we ever had
problems was during mating season when the males were overly
aggressive.  most times when a  person reports they've been "chased"
by a moccasin, is when they've managed to blunder up on one at night
(primarily nocturnal hunters) when it was feeding and like any animal
it was defending it's food.

a lot of the mocc's rep from from a larger, blacker, aquatic water
snake (non poisionous but with a temper) that is much more aggressive
in it's habitat,  .. and it's land cousin, the bull-snake (also
harmless, but grows to a rather impressive size ... many years back
we had a problem with especially large one taking our chickens in
rural north texas).  both come out more during the day.  

was raised on a working ranch and did scout camp work .. in both
cases part of the job was to keep handy a shotgun (410) loaded with
snake-shot and/or a brush hog (a short-hafted halberd for the rural
working-man .. good for brush clearing) around to clean out the
mocc's around the animal structures or the boat house to keep the
horses, dogs or less observant human kids from getting bit from the
hunting mocc's .... once again, keep the rat & mouse population down
and you won't have much, if any problem with snakes intruding.  

copperheads are a very timid snake (and not overly poisionous as pit
vipers go) that will in almost all cases run away from the first sign
of humans ... the rare copperhead bite comes when you pick it up or
step on it in the leaves

'wolf
... they belong there, we don't

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