Is This True About Australia? It Sure Seems Like It…

@Raymuundo I lived east of this city and copperhead snakes were very common there. My sister got bit within 2 months of us moving there. 3 family members have been snakebit and all while working in rural areas.

@cherokeepatti not great but this where you live…. ? They were here first. We just have to coexist.

@Raymuundo mmm no, we kill them if we see them, they’ll breed and have more. I live in Oklahoma, just north of Texas. The problem was that the use of DDT for decades nearly killed out hawks that are good at catching and eating snakes. I rarely saw one when I was a teen and see them all the time now driving through rural areas. Roadrunner birds are also good at catching and eating them.

@cherokeepatti snakes are quite passive though. The don’t like people and generally avoid them? It sounds like the ecosystem has been disrupted.

@Raymuundo You’ve never been to Oklahoma have you? Copperheads and Rattlesnakes are not passive. Cottonmouth water moccasins snakes are passive, they tend to cluster up in creeks. We used to play about 15-20 feet from them in the water. When we’d walk down the farm road to the creek and they could see us they’d all open their mouths at once and show us they were warning us they were there.

@cherokeepatti I haven’t and I wouldn’t know. I only know about Australian snakes.

@Raymuundo brown snakes and red bellied back snakes are some of the most dangerous in the world. We live with them.

@Raymuundo what would happen if you accidentally stepped on one of these non-aggressive snakes?

@cherokeepatti can vouch that road runners eat rattlesnakes. I have not only seen it, yet also why we let them roam around trash bins and roll offs.

Very friendly critters. 😁

@DeWayfarer I have rarely seen a roadrunner but it gives me such a joy to spot one running across the road, then they pause and turn around with a look like “Whatcha staring at?”

@cherokeepatti oh yes! Know that look very well!

I often talked to them and was able to approach them within ten feet. Also we have startled each other a few times.

I think they knew we wanted them around the site. Not only for rattlesnakes. Yet for other rodents as well.

@DeWayfarer they eat scorpions too

@cherokeepatti never saw that, yet no scorpions here. Do know about scorpions in Texas. Especially at boot camp and at camp bullis Texas. We had to check out boots every morning. We lived in tents.

@DeWayfarer scorpions here so I like anything that’ll eat them. My uncle was planting a rose bush and dug into a scorpion nest, he said about 50 of them came crawling out and he didn’t have time to get the spray. He stood there with the shovel beating as many as he could to death. They were in the rocky areas behind the house too. My sisters would go out there at night with a flashlight and a jar and long tweezers and catch them to put in a jar.

@cherokeepatti one of our gun instructors lifted up a tire when we were training. Just to show what to look out for while being in the prone position.

Literally hundreds where under that large tractor tire.

That's good old San Antonio for you!

@DeWayfarer yikes…in cellars, under pieces of boards or tin, under brush piles, under homes with raised foundations, in fields of bluebell flowers, sometimes even crawl up into toilets….yikes.

@cherokeepatti that's life there though. Like living with chiggers or fire ants is. You just can get rid of all of that.

Heck, you can't even see chiggers!

@DeWayfarer I’ve been bitten by dozens of chiggers sitting on a bank fishing….but not dangerous like a rattlesnake bite.

@cherokeepatti nor are Scorpios for everyone. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Been bitten before.

@DeWayfarer Had one crawl up my leg to my knee underneath my jeans at my aunts house. I thought it was a biting red ant, had been bitten 8 times by one when it got under my jeans while I was waxing my car in the driveway. I slowly took my jeans off and there laid a scorpion. I don’t know how it kept from stinging me. I had lost a lot of weight and hadn’t had time to take my jeans in again so they were really loose.

@cherokeepatti camp bullis I had a lot of horror stories. Living in tents for six weeks straight does tend for a lot of such stories.

Not many didn't get bit by something. One guy got bit by a rattlesnake in our tent.

@DeWayfarer did they have you out there catching them and eating them in training?

@cherokeepatti nope! Neither. K rations mostly. Yet there was a chow hall of sorts when we were not off exploring.

@DeWayfarer I’ve heard from a few who were in basic training in National guard or the other branches that they were camping and catching snakes and eating them.

@cherokeepatti camp bullis was a marine medical base yet shared with the air force security forces. I was USAF security. Eventually went into guarding missiles. Which is another long story because we lived in camper units throughout the Midwest. Yes, even in snow.