From: oaf@serverx.osf.org (Oded Feingold)
Subject: big snake, little snake, Bitis gabonica/Ophiophagus hannah
Summary: swan song posting for at least 16 hours - address changing
Keywords: so many bytes, so little time...
Reply-To: oaf@klosters.ai.mit.edu
Organization: not much, but anytime now
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 20:47:36 GMT


BIG SNAKE BITES

Regarding Kyle Wohlmuth, Burmese feeding bites and in-jokes: The
reason he only survived one is he only received one.  The other times,
he was hungry (or confused, more likely) and bit the poor Burmese.

These herpers, I tell ya...

I've been bitten plenty by big snakes.  In ALL cases, it was because I
was silly or mistaken, or just bad luck, or something.  [There, that
covers the subject!]

FEEDING BITE: I brought chickens home on a hot summer day, popped one
in a big feeding box, washed my hands, and wandered off to put Kitten
(4 meter female Burmese) in the feeding box.  I opened her cage,
picked her up (in my arms, head hanging down), and started carrying
her over.
    I was wearing shorts.  She tongued my leg, found the spot the
chicken had brushed, and clamped on.  I got her off by continuing to
the kitchen, finding a wooden spoon, pulling her lower jaw(s) forward
over the spoon, then folding them back, slipping a thumb and an index
finger into the hinge of her jaw and pulling the still-attached upper
jaws forward and off.  Lots'a blood, virtually NO pain.  No problem
with losing the rest of her - she had wrapped around my leg and was
constricting.  After I detached her and let her mouth close, she was
still totally calm.  On a stupid hunch, I wondered if she was still
friendly; I let go of her head.  She put her head in my hand to be
petted (why you think I called her "Kitten?") meanwhile happily
squeezing the purported chicken...  After a little maneuvering, I
unwrapped her body and dropped her in the box with dinner.

FEAR BITE: I had a very big, very sick snake, and took him to the
veterinary hospital; he reacted badly to the bright lights, the lack
of a hiding place, the temperature and drafts (winter, of course), and
started striking and biting with all his strength.  The vet, not a
reptile specialist, did a back somersault over the examining table and
sprinted for Canada.  I caught a couple of mouthfuls of teeth with
high impact, then slapped away the next strike, grabbed some neck, and
slipped my hands up to his head before he could turn around and nail
me again.  He thrashed a short time, but once he was clearly	
losing (I was motivated, trust me) tried to ball himself up and hide
his head, with my hand around his neck in the middle.  No, not a ball
python - a 4.5 meter burmese.  [Those bites hurt!  They were also
septic.]

INTRUSION/TERRITORIALITY BITE: Snakes that have found a nice hiding
place, like in the ceiling (oops!), feel secure there and want to
stay.  They may bite to keep from being pulled out.  That has happened
to me (how could I know the separate little room for the snake had an
incipient break in the ceiling?)  They'll pull hard to stay there when
they're being tugged out.  However, once it's a contest of strength
and not keeping intrusive hands from entering their lair, they
normally don't continue biting (assuming they're tame to begin with).
Your mileage may vary, of course.  Beware of tearing up self and snake
on nail points in the ceiling.

I've also experienced anger and cold-wakeup (defensive) bites, but
time is short and USEnet is long.  Maybe some other day.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'RE BEING BITTEN: Keep your head.  On a feeding
bite, snakes that think they "have" you can be fooled.  If you can't
reach the head, like if it's under a bunch of coils, start unwrapping
the tail, then let it rewrap around some non-critical part of you
(like a leg).  The snake can detect heat through its skin, so letting
it wrap around a chair or even a pillow isn't so good.  I've found
vodka works great for offending an attached snake - have some around,
with the top off as long as the snake isn't under total control.  Even
The guy who discovered that Poteen didn't work merely had an Irish (or
alcoholic, or merely a sophisticated, snake-about-town) burmese python
- what can I say?

If it's a fear or aggression bite, note that a blanket, skilfully
handled, is really the all purpose weapon for anything smaller than a
leopard.  That goes for snakes, raccoons, octopi, children, vampire
bats, virtually anything(*).  It's also a lot less damaging to the animal
than guns or baseball bats.  Presumably you don't want to damage the
animal.  (This IS rec.pets.herp, not rec.hunting, right?)

(*)  Thanks and a hat tip to the Staffords, who have messed with all
	the animals listed above, and then some.

LITTLE SNAKES IN YOUR LAB...

After posting once that one shouldn't be intimidated by people telling
you you're too inexperienced to try keeping a putative ring-neck, and
then hearing that they may be hard to keep and issuing a retraction,
I've received mail that someone has one which is happily eating worms.
So I'll just say that I hope the care-and-feeding primer I supplied
worked out, and if you snap up something and succeed with it, great.

The test of success will be different for different species, but the
common factors including eating, shedding, and growing.  Just eating
isn't enough, though it's a good early discriminator - you don't know
whether the animal is getting the nutrition it needs.  The ultimate
test, of course, is successful breeding, but that's too strong a
constraint for beginning animal keepers who might hold on to a snake

One other thing - different people have different animals for
different reasons.  Comments that ring-necks, or earth snakes, or
garter snakes aren't "sexy" or expensive, so real herpers don't keep
junk species, are probably poorly placed.  I've kept garter snakes,
water snakes, and smooth green snakes.  I like them - sometimes enough
to go out of my way to have one, sometimes not.  Of course, 

In all cases, you should have a backup plan available if things don't
work out.  For a ring-neck(?) snake found in the lab, that's simple:
if it doesn't eat in a week, out it goes into its natural habitat.

But a backup plan isn't always so simple.  

That brings me to the last part of this posting (aren't you glad?)


VENOMOUS REPTILES

Let's start with the backup plan.

In a previous posting ("Poor Micrurus fulvius, Evil Girlfriend,
Suggestions"), I noted that Coral snakes are hard to keep - they don't
eat, they pine away, they die.  [They need quiet, heat, a secure hide
box, probably small snakes as food, and virtually no handling, or they
stress out.]  However, throwing the guy out the door doesn't work in
winter in Massachusetts.  It's murderous, and if the snake survives
even a short time (because it isn't really winter in Massachusetts but
spring in California) may do bad things to your relationships with
your neighbors, or the law.

So, before you even consider getting something hot, you have to have
all your ducks in a row.  Examples:

    *	An effective backup plan for failures, like airfare to ship it
	back home and someone you trust to collect and release it if
	it won't eat.

    *	Coverage for the feeding requirements.  Exactly how do you
	maintain a colony of small snakes for M. fulvius, or larger
	ones for O. hannah?  Can you afford it over the long term?

    *	Housing to do the job right.  To clean a kingsnake's cage, all
	you have to do is open the door, haul it out, drop it in a
	bag, on the floor, or around your neck, and clean.  Don't try
	that with a cobra or viper!  Apart from the danger to you,
	you'll stress the snake.  It's not likely the animal is
	hand-tame, so it doesn't care about being picked up or put in
	a bag.  [It's not unheard of - there was a king cobra on
	Johnny Carson some years back, but national TV takes years of
	rehearsal, no?]
	    So now you may need a sub-dividable cage, with separate
	access doors.  That takes money, planning, and construction
	skill on somebody's part.  Also, you don't know how well it
	works until you've tried it; maybe you should put a harmless
	snake in the cage for a month, and see if it's easy to move,
	and clean, and ...

    *	Access to good medical backup.  Does the corner veterinarian
	handle Gaboon vipers?  Do you know enough about their health
	that you can diagnose the need for veterinary intervention?
	Can you remove a stuck spectacle safely for both you and the
	animal, or do you need some brave (or foolhardy) friends?  Do
	you have a supply of anti-venin, and is there somebody who
	knows enough to get you to the hospital, make sure the doctors
	don't figure you've had a heart attack, and make the
	anti-venin available when they need it the day you make a
	mistake?

    *	Legality: rest assured that the neighbors and the law will be
	intensely interested if they ever hear a thing about your
	beasts.  It may not be illegal, but people are watching.  If
	you have a hot animal, and there's a fire at your house while
	you're out earning a living, and a fireman is envenomated, or
	the snake merely escapes, life can get very interesting very
	fast.  Particularly so if you're supposed to have a permit or
	fifty, and you don't.  You'd be amazed how many floorboards
	the cops will tear up, looking for guns and drugs in the house
	of someone who was merely foolish enough to have an illicit
	herp that came to their attention.  Those suckers are MESSY!


None of these problems are insuperable; however, they take a
thoroughly non-casual mindset.  You have to plan carefully, execute
correctly, and invest both time and money in housing, food, and
protection from any problems peculiar to the animals you're bringing
in.  In addition, you have to give up certain aspects of privacy,
since the possibility arises that the world may intrude on you.  Even
if your king cobra is permitted and registered, and housed in perfect
security in a vault in the basement, if a neighbor decides to rag you
by telling the cops he saw it in your bedroom window, they cannot do
anything but visit you, even at 0300 on Sunday.  You have effectively
given up the privilege of having some marijuana on the coffee table,
in the statistical near-certainty that nobody will come looking for
it.  You can't even have stuff that looks and smells like marijuana on
the coffee table.  Who will take care of your snakes while you're
beating the rap?  More likely, can you trust the agents who confiscate
the animals for "safe-keeping" while you beat the rap to take good
care of them?

			       ********
Having said all that, I'll note my personal feelings.  A properly
maintained king cobra, particularly one that eats rodents, is a
glorious treasure.  Also, gaboon (and rhinoceros - B. nasicorna)
vipers are lovely.  If I thought I could pull it off, they'd be mine!
			       ********

If you can handle the responsibilities, and especially if you can get
them breeding and lessen collection pressures, more power to you.

But know why you're doing it, and make sure you're mentally,
physically and financially qualified - don't play games.  If you screw
up, most likely your snakes will be killed, and the legitimate and
serious keepers of venomous herps, down the street or across the
country, will run into crap because you've been a dope.  That's very
unfair.

[For anyone who has read this far and wishes to respond, note my new
e-mail address, below.]

Oded Feingold  oaf@klosters.ai.mit.edu
428 Broadway, apt. 3   Somerville, Ma. 02145   (617) 776-1225