Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

I am as much a gun aficionado as any other crusty backwoodsman, but having 
gone mano-a-fang with a great number of pit vipers, I have to question the 
value 
of firearms against our legless antagonists.

This year has been a very light pit viper season with only two having to be 
sent to be with their ancestors.  Some seasons it's near fifty.  If you are 
in 
immediate danger of being attacked by a snake, a pistol is useless.  A snake 
is deadly quick.  So we are talking about removing a snake from an area where 
you'd rather not step on it later by accident and there aren't many good ways 
of doing that besides killing it,

Snakes aren't very sturdy, it takes very little to kill one.  Of course, they 
don't immediately know they are dead.  You can cut the head off a copperhead 
and then pick up the rest of the snake by the tail and headless snake will 
attempt to get away, and failing that, it will attempt to bite you.  The 
brain of 
a snake seems to be optional equipment.  

I've found a long stick to be a much better weapon than a gun.  A hoe or 
shovel is ideal and one or the other is almost always in hand when I 
encounter the 
snakes.  Once you are eyeball to eyeball with a snake, it helps to speak a 
little snake, be a Parselmouth.  A pit viper can't see very well and depend 
on 
heat detection to tell where prey or threats are.  They don't percieve a 
stick 
or hoe as living, and so it's not a threat.  They don't coil in a loop, of 
course, to strike but make an 'S' shape.  From that position they can strike 
a 
few inches longer than the lenght of the snake.  If the snake sees your 
shadow 
coming toward it, it will stop and defend itself. If it sees your shadow 
going 
away, it will flee.

Ready the weapon and if the snake turns to flee, strike it sharply and it is 
immediately in the next world.  If the snake remains "coiled" strike it 
between mid-snake and the tail.  If it lives, it will immediately uncoil and 
try to 
flee and you dispatch it then.

I hate that it has to happen, but any chance that a child will enounter that 
particular snake in the garden is too great a chance.  My apologies to the 
sanke, but better luck in the next life.