News stories during the past month have reinforced the point that trying to kill a reptile that is not an actual threat generally causes more harm than ignoring it. One of the stories had tragic consequences but not because of the reptile's actions.
A five-year-old boy was accidentally killed by a stray bullet that ricocheted from the surface of a lake in Oklahoma . A policeman across the lake was shooting at a snake in a tree—a harmless rat snake according to the police chief I spoke with. Whether the policeman and the boy would have fared better had the snake been left alone is obvious.
Two more stories about needless assaults on reptiles had far less serious outcomes. A man in the state of Washington attacked a large rattlesnake with a shovel and then proceeded to pick up the supposedly dead snake. Wrong move. The snake reflexively bit the man on the finger, sending him to the hospital. Then, last week in Massillon , Ohio , a man was arrested for shooting himself in the foot while trying to kill a turtle.
It's faintly possible that the man was hoping to make turtle soup and was simply trying to kill the main ingredient as swiftly as possible. If he did it just because he wanted to kill a turtle, he should take up a new hobby. Meanwhile, the two snake stories remind us that many people are still afflicted with an antisnake attitude that serves no one well.
The reasons for not killing or harassing a snake that does not pose an immediate danger to children or pets are many. First, any snake in America , including rattlesnakes, that can readily get away from a human will do so. No U.S. snake will chase a person, despite claims that someone's cousin knew someone to whom this happened.
The Washington rattlesnake incident reminds me of a talk I gave about snakes in which I used a live diamondback rattlesnake. I noted how they typically bite people only when they feel threatened and do not make unprovoked attacks. When I finished the talk, a man approached and shook hands with me left-handed. His scarred right hand was a gnarled set of immobile fingers. He said he agreed with me that most serious bites by U.S. snakes are caused by someone picking up or trying to kill the snake.
Holding up his right hand as an instructional prop, he told me how he and some friends had encountered a huge diamondback rattler in the sandhills of southern Georgia . As even rattlesnakes will do, the snake retreated immediately, going down a gopher tortoise burrow. A third of the snake's body was still sticking out of the burrow when the man picked up a large stick and whapped the snake. The stick broke, the man fell forward, and the rattlesnake, which had turned in the burrow to face outward, immediately struck the hand in self-defense.
Killing a snake is almost always completely unnecessary from a safety standpoint. If you see the snake, you only need move away to be safe. And if you give the snake enough room, most will move away from you. A legitimate snakebite is one in which a person unintentionally and unknowingly provokes a venomous snake and is bitten. The odds of being in a car wreck are thousands if not millions of times greater than the odds of receiving a lethal legitimate snakebite in any given year in the United States .
People persist in misunderstanding and maligning snakes, and an email attachment making the rounds does nothing to ameliorate that situation. The photo of a smiling man displaying a dead western diamondback rattlesnake is not a hoax. And the snake is indeed a large one. But if, as the caption claims, it were nine feet long, it would be two feet longer than the longest of its kind every recorded. Such scare tactics seem designed to encourage people to fear snakes rather than treat them with the respect and admiration they deserve.
If you encounter a snake, the safest thing you can possibly do is move in the opposite direction from it. Trying to kill it may result in severe damage, and not necessarily to the snake.
by Whit Gibbonssource :
http://www.uga.edu/~srelherp/ecoview/Eco78.htm