(Throat clearing sounds…) Ahemmmmm. Someonme has never heard of Karma. The most fucked up philosophy on the planet. If you are born crippled, blind, poor, or even return as a snake, it is because you deserve it. Babies born with deficiencies in this country are sent to work reclaiming salt from the ocean or to pick fruit. One thing Christianity brought to the land of Karma was care for the poor. (I kid you not). You can’t even imagine how fucked up the doctrine of Karma actually is.
Now, I won’t give Christianity a gold star. Obviously God has a plan and made babies fucked up for a reason. So there is no escaping the BS heaped on us by religion. I’m just saying, depending on your paradigm, it most certainly is the snake’s fault. But! Imagine what the asshole must have done to earn the Karma of a mouse?
Personally, I’m more of a karma chameleon. I just sorta come and go. Oddly enough, though, when I ask people, “Do you really want to hurt me,” it’s a miracle that most of them just say they would miss me blind. (Whatever the hell that means. )
Indeed not, but interestingly IF a deity with limitless power and knowledge deliberately created it, then it would be entirely culpable for all the suffering caused. Luckily as I always say, there is no evidence for such a cruel and barbaric entity.
Oh boy, here we go with the miracle claims again. As George Orwell said “I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.”
Everybody always uses snakes as metaphors for evil.
The amount of nastiness, human suffering, and evil that is prevented by snakes (and mostly venomous ones) is never mentioned.
Rodents destroy about 30% of the world’s entire grain supply.
This percentage would be astronomically higher if snakes weren’t keeping rodents in check by eating them.
A similar logic applies to the diseases that are carried by rodents. In India, venomous snakes prevent epidemics of bubonic plague because sick and diseased animals are always eaten first by predators.
Rats are so resourceful and resiliant that it would be logistically impossible (at the current level of technology) to eradicate them and keep them in check without predators like snakes.
Where I live, the field mice and rats would be ridiculously overpopulated without snakes. The black rat snakes (what most here call black snakes) are extremely efficient at controlling rodent populations. I have captured a number of them, especially when I still had chickens and they would show up for a scrambled egg breakfast. I never killed them as they are no threat to humans, even when near dwellings. I would just relocate them.
The largest were 6 ft. long or more. (1.8 m). Many exceeded 3ft.
I have also caught several poisonous snakes here, namely rattlesnakes and copperheads.
The black rat snakes will eat other snakes, and apparently the combination of this and the fact of their voracious appetites for rodents, it is a common belief here that if you have black snakes, you will not have poisonous snakes.
While not always true, there does seem to be a correlation, from my experience.
My wife was bitten by a very small copperhead several years ago, and it is not something I recommend… she stepped on it, so I told her she deserved it…. (she did not agree)
The bad rap that snakes get is undeserved.
I have seen many dangerous snakes in the woods, etc., and the only real threat was from my ignorance or disregard for their habitat.
I think that barn/farm cats deserve a mention when you’re talking about rodent control, they’re definitely part of the equation.
I agree with you about snakes, leave them alone and they’ll do the same in most cases.
We regularly see snakes around our house. I like having them around. Most of them are just harmless water snakes,with some of them being quite large. See a few cottenmouths from time to time. Not very often, though.
Most recently I heard my dogs going nuts in the pen, so naturally I went out to check. Turns out a rather large cottonmouth was attempting to cross from the woodline toward the back of our house, but got stopped at the pen by my Black Lab/Rottweiler mix pooch. (It’s a huge pen area, by the way.) Snake looked to be about 4-5 feet, with a really thick body. So I went and got my snake handling rake to help it “relocate”. Using the rake as an extended shield, I grabbed the tail to pull it away from the fence to turn it back torward the woods. But, dammit, the little bastard started weaving itself into the fence before I could pull it clear. (And they are amazingly strong creatures, by the way.) Thankfully, after just a couple of weaves it started exiting the fence back toward the trees. So I let it go and watched it hurry back to the woods away from the house. Snakes don’t typically want to fight if they don’t have to.
So, basically, between the snakes and our two outdoor cats, we certainly don’t have a rodent problem.
You can add spiders to the list of predators here. And they are not particularly big either. If they can catch them the common wolf spider will take small mice, juvenile snakes, skinks etc without a second thought. Fortunately non venomous and growing to the size of a dinner plate they make excellent house companions and have been known to answer to a given name.
The other buggers will also take mice, the bird eating spiders the various funnel webs, not common in urban areas (except a section of Sydney) and up North the various tarantulas, Some growing to epic proportions for an arachnid.
Even the small spiders like the redback or Orb will take small mice.
Spiders… the size… of… DINNER PLATES???.. HOUSE COMPANIONS??? Uhhhhhh… Errrrrr… Uhhhh… But, but, but… WHY??? Look, don’t get me wrong. I don’t have arachnophobia or anything like that. I actually kinda like spiders, as a matter of fact. I handle the cute little jumping spiders around here all the time. Even so, I’m just not too sure about having one the size of a small cat wandering freely about my abode.
I like them too. We have northern water snakes here that get fairly large and closely resemble cottonmouths. I have had arguments with uninformed people here who think they are cottonmouths. To this day, no one has been able to “show me” one…
I am a bit too far north for them, although that may not remain the case. My Oklahoma friends have taught me a bit about them as I used to spend a lot of time there.
Yep, that has been my experience, although I must say, the copperheads are considerably more cantankerous than rattlers.
I live in a very rural area with a large expanse of woods right up against my “yard”.
The only rattlers I have killed were because they were in my immediate yard, before I had cats, and I was concerned for my grandkids when they were still kids.
I must say though, they were delicious.
End of leg to end of leg sure. They will come in to the house in winter to hatch their babies and generally wander around. Captain Cat encountered one and was quite content to watch from a distance…I did have a pet one some years ago. She lived in the bedroom of my old board house and Eric (actually another she) lived in the living room. I caught her in a mouse’s nest eating the babies. The other bastard is the nasty fucker, the Whitetail. It likes being inside and its bite can give necrosis…it did to me the fucker. Lost all the middle flesh off my right pinky at one point. Took ages to grow back. They can go pretty large about the size of a toddlers hand.
Yuck,yuck,yuck! Hate spiders! They are completely creepy! We get a lot of wolf spiders here. When my boys were little they used to capture them in jars and watch them duke it out with each other. They were shits.
Australia is filled with critters that want to kill you! Why, @Old_man_shouts_at_cl, do you even want to live there!?
I’m just such a chicken shit.
I can sit in a room filled with felons, knowing many of them are armed and not be afraid….but put me in a room with a spider or a hornet and damn…….!
)
. (she did not agree)
Somebody put a damn bell on that thing!
