Snakes

[soubriquet 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by manda:
i remember having a small snake fall out of a tree and landing on me when hiking.

That would have been quite a surprise. I quite like snakes, and other reptiles. I give them plenty of respect though, and never had any trouble.

I was out bush with someone who accidently hacked open a bee hive with his machete. I ran and got away, but he lost his glasses and couldn't see to run. By the time I got back to him, he was crawling with bees, and had picked up hundreds of stings. They were all over his face and upper body.

It took me about 1/2 hour to walk him back to the vehicle, by which time he was semi-conscious and delerious. He must have weighed about 120kg, so I'd have had a hard time carrying him. Then it was an hour's drive to hospital. They gave him a shot and cleaned him up pretty well, but kept him in for a couple of nights. That was very unpleasant

[snobee 0]

Indo & Bushy - your tales of Oz kids & snakes & things brings it all back.

 

Used to collect snakes with my big bros - one escaped on the bus back from Port Lincoln. One (a baby red bellied)bit a kid at school ` show & tell.

We'd often fall asleep at night playing with them in bed and mum freaking out when changing sheets to find one coiled up at the foot.

 

And lizards - they're just the bang! Good ol blueys gotta be my favourite, altho geckos gotta be the cutest lil reps around.

And didn't everyone say if a sleepy latched onto your finger, then you'd have to kill it to get it off, coz it's dinosaur brain was locked in bite mode.

 

Saw a bluey a few months ago for sale at a pet shop here （青舌とかげ）for ￥15000. Was it bred here or an illegal alien???

 

But on the other side, some of those slippery snaky #'s are surely not to be treated lightly.

 

Tiger snakes! Now they'd be the meanest, baddest lil muthers around. Mess with them at your own peril.

 

Out of the top ten most dangerous snakes in the world 9 are oztralian - I'm led to believe.

 

There in lies the allure.

[bushpig 0]

yeah the tigers are much more agressive than most. The King browns aren't too docile either...

 

Yeah we all used to hear, and repeat, the story that if a stumpie tail latched on then you had to chop it's head off to make it let go! Of course they were too damn slow to ever have to even worry about proving that right or wrong. Gekkos rule mate! Love the little buggers, and I get plenty of them here at my apartment too which is nice. I've heard that about 9 of the ten deadliest snakes are from OZ. Not sure how true that is, but even if it isn't it still reflects that we have a shit-load of bad snakes in Oz eh! I agree, snakes are cool little fellas (unless they are biting you).

[wendy-cake 0]

You get them IN your apartment Bushpig?

 

Snakes, lizards, spiders.... all give me the creeps.

[bushpig 0]

yeah, but gekkos are such cute little fellas wendy-cake Harmless too.

[soubriquet 0]

Gekkos are lovely friendly animals and they rid your home of unwanted insects. I love them too. They are fascinating to watch.

[viv&kev 0]

Good to watch maybe, I just don't want them in my house!

[bushpig 0]

as soub said, they eat up unwanted bugs and pests. If I do find them inside(only very occasionally), I usually catch them and put them outside.

[klingon 10]

How big are they Bushpig?

 

I like watching them but me too not in my house!

[Yuki's Passion 1]

 Quote:

Originally posted by soubriquet:
Gekkos are lovely friendly animals and they rid your home of unwanted insects. I love them too. They are fascinating to watch.

Gekkos are awesome! We used to have families of em in Hawaii. I had a few in Hiroshima. Unfortunately I havent seen em in Kansai. Damn big cities!! Need to move to the Inaka.

[bushpig 0]

Klingon, they are usually between 5 to 10cm. Has anyone ever heard them chirping? Very cute sound.

[AK 77 0]

I like gekkos and snakes too - gekkos rock, i wish i had them im my house, bit cold in Nagano though, i think. met them alot in Thai land though - their footsteps can be really noisy, it's funny they sound like something alot bigger.

[soubriquet 0]

Hmm. The sound they make is "ge-ko ge-ko". They can stick to glass because their feet have millions of hairs on their feet, each with hundreds of thousands of pads. The pads are so small that molecular attraction (van der Waals force) can fix them to a surface. They can hang from the ceiling by one toe

 

It says here:

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2000/06/07_gecko.html

[bushpig 0]

Yeah, amazing little buggers!

[sakebomb 0]

Was lucky enough to see a snake the other day, first one I have seen since I have been here. At a guess I think it was similiar to the ratsnake above.

 

Collecting reptiles is fun

[Fossil 0]

Nope aussie snakes have hollow fangs and will bite through cloth.

I had a patient in a Perth hospital who had belonged to an elite army group and who found a snake in his kitchen. In true Rambo style he tried to pin the Brown snake with his son's toy golf club. The snake got just ONE fang into the skin of his middle finger and by the time he got to us (via the local vet for goodness sake!) he'd had 5 cardiac arrests and was bleeding from every orifice.

Dont get complacent

 

 

"I've had quite a few encounters with snakes in Oz. Australian snakes can be extremely venomous, but as the venom flows down a groove at the back of the tooth, a couple of layers of cloth serves as an effective barrier."

[soubriquet 0]

"Nope aussie snakes have hollow fangs and will bite through cloth."

 

Learned soemthing today. Correct. I'll still continue to wear leather boots, long trousers and gaiters in the field though.

[JPchucky 0]

Damn snobee I was about to call bunk on the 9 of the 10 most venomous snakes are from OZ. A quick google and all 10 are from OZ.

 

My brother got bit by a burly ass rattlesnake, while hiking the Appalachian trail. He got lucky and didn't get any venom. That's the good thing about rattlesnakes, around 50% of the bites are dry.

[bushpig 0]

no shit! That's a bizarre way to be!

[NisekoPancakes 0]

Not Snakes on a Plane, but Snakes in the Mail

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5215506.stm

[daver 0]

"Out of the top ten most dangerous snakes in the world 9 are oztralian"

 

not really. perhaps some of the most dangerous when tested on mice , but that does really mean most dangerous. there are also several african and asian snakes that make it into the list of top venomous snakes. like the Beaked Sea Snake, or the Black Mamba for example.

none the less, australia sounds wicked dangerous. do you guys have deadly spiders as well?

[soubriquet 0]

Redbacks are common and can give a very unpleasant bite. Eastern Australia has funnel web (trapdoor) spiders which can be lethal.

 

I saw only three live snakes in 12 years in Oz, but I`ve seen two in 2 here. Very unreliable, but it makes me think there`s a much higher snake population density in Japan.

[daver 0]

did any of you aussies box with kangaroos when you were children?

[soubriquet 0]

Nope, but my brother found a snake in the barn when he was about 4, so he fetched a spade and killed it.

 

I used to wear boots, jeans and gaiters in the field to protect against spinifex and tics as much as anything. The biggest worry was when scrambling on rocks, because then your hands and head become vulnerable.

 

The scorpians aren't very friendly either.

[damian 0]

When I was about 10 years old I hunted snakes along the streams and dams in my rural area. One summer I killed something like 12 snakes, skinned them all and nailed out the salted skins on planks of wood. I could find you a snake within the first 10 minutes of looking, although I only bothered killing the big ones (like 6-7 feet long). I even ate a few.

 

I was a grotesque child.