There is nasty stuff in the water. And if you don’t believe me, check this out:
That is a 15′ (Readers state that water moccasins don’t get that big and it is probably only 5-6′. That is, by my estimation, still 5-6′ more water mocassin for my tastes.)water moccasin near the devastation in New Orleans.
Authorities should show that picture, and I bet it would convince a few people. I, personally, would drop dead from heart failure if I saw that near my house.*
*Brief personal anecdote:
As an undergrad, I lived in a house with several guys at the top of a hill. Our street, garage, and mailbox were about 50 steep steps down the hill, and on either sides of the steps were brush, thornbushes, honeysuckle, etc. One day during the summer, I was walking, barefoot, down the steps to check the mail, when I step on some rubbery like tube that immediately hissed and lashed out at me. I jumped, not unlike startled cats who reflexively shoot straight up into the air, over the railing and into the briar patches.
Turns out I had stepped on a snake sunning itself. I have never been the same sense. I never checked the mail barefoot again. In fact, I checked the mail with a shotgun or a shovel for a month afterwards.
capelza
Jeebus! That’s a big CMWM. I don’t know, John Cole. To get to our old swimming hole when I was a kid, we had to dodge those critters. I learned at an early age how to distinguish one of them in the water from a muskrat tail…
It might not be so shocking for some of those folks.
Me, I’d be convinced, though..15′!! :O
Demdude
I think anyone working in this environment should get a Vegas trip.
Oh by the way, thanks for the picture. For the rest of the day I will hit the keys for BJuice and immediately scroll down a few pages with my eyes closed.
Demdude
Oh, as far as snakes go, I always go by my former boss’s philosphy on snake identification. “Kill them first and then figure out what they are”.
Trent
No offense, but that’s a fucking riot. LMAO!
BumperStickerist
yeah – with all the muck and crap in the water, in two weeks time that’s going to be a mutant 23′ water moccasin.
It’s offspring might have wings.
arnott
omg ! where did u get that pic from ?
Anderson
Cole’s reaction reminds me that when I was in first grade, I picked up a shoe to put it on, and a large cockroach ran out & over my bare hand before I could shake it to the ground.
To this day (age 36), I tap each shoe with a toe before I pick it up & put it on. Had to explain this to a girlfriend when she noticed it.
ppGaz
Out here in the desert, we just name the snakes and treat them as pets.
Okay, exaggerating. Clearly there are horrible hazards down there, but at the same time, I sympathize with people who are relatively okay in their homes — or think they are — and fear the government coming along and throwing them out.
Seal Pool
Are people really that scared of snakes? I’ve got a four-foot white-throat monitor lizard. Does that scare you too, or is it just the movement of the snake? Or the threat of poison?
I’ve always thought I was immune to being afraid of animals since I grew up with tarantulas, lizards, frogs, eels, scorpions and such as pets, but encountering a wild weasel running at full speed in front of my bicycle really scared the bejeezus out of me once. It wasn’t the surprise, it was the fact that it seemed to move at a supernatural pace.
James
Certainly nasty stuff in the water (the wildlife is the least of it), but that’s no 15′ snake. While it does indeed appear to be a Cottonmouth (water moccasin), they only grow to about 6′ maximum length.
See here: http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/detail.asp?allSpecies=y&searchText=water%20moccasin&curGroupID=7&lgfromWhere=&curPageNum=1
p.lukasiak
Okay, exaggerating. Clearly there are horrible hazards down there, but at the same time, I sympathize with people who are relatively okay in their homes—or think they are—and fear the government coming along and throwing them out.
well, the city has no potable water, and a non-existent sewage system….which means either getting these people out, or shipping in the hundreds of thousands of fresh water PLUS dealing with the additional (and literal) crap that these people will be adding to the environmental disaster that is New Orleans right now.
This is a city undergoing triage — and the people who want to stay will just make it harder for those trying to bring the city back from the brink of death.
Anderson
All due respect to James, and the scale of the photo may be misleading—but I’d wager that there are more things in the bayous of SE La. than are dreamt of in natural philosophy.
jobiuspublius
Can’t wait to see the gators.
tBone
When I was kid, I found a dead bullsnake run over on a bridge near our house – had a big tire track through the middle of it. I leaned over to get a closer look, and the front half of the damn thing (back to the point where it was flattened) reared up and hissed at me. There was a little tBone-shaped puff of dust there a millisecond later.
My mom ended up having to come look for me, because I took off in the opposite direction from our driveway and had no way to get back without crossing the bridge again. No way in hell was I coming within 50 feet of that undead zombie snake again.
I love animals, but I still have issues with snakes to this day. Namely, I would like them to be eradicated from the face of the earth.
Mike S
I’d show them this picture as well. I think that would get me running a little faster.
John S.
Mike-
That’s a gruesome picture, indeed.
As a resident of Florida and having some experience with gators, I wonder how many bodies will be recovered by officials that haven’t already been reclaimed by the animal kingdom.
capelza
That gator pic is amazing. Is that a pic from NOLA???
John S.
Move to England, Ireland or Hawaii. I think you will find those places blissfully snake-free.
Mike S
Yeah. It’s from a German paper. It’s making the rounds of the blogs.
Anderson
LOL!
slide
Mardi Gras anyone?
ET
I am not generally afraid of snakes but that one is a BIG BAD.
Vladi G
I still remember playing in our high school league finals for golf about 15 years ago out at what used to be Industry Hills east of Los Angeles. We were walking through some tall grass on our way from the tee to the green on a par three. This was back in the days when we still wore metal spikes. I looked down and saw something slithering away, and said “holy crap, there was a big ass snake right there.” The fellow competitor walking next to me say “ya know, I was pretty sure I just stepped on something.” Scared the crap out of me, even though it was probably just a harmless garter snake.
Kent
That snake looks like a normal 5′ cottonmouth. They are still nasty critters, but don’t get anywhere near 15′.
As for the gator. Looks like it was shot and dragged out there for the photo op. When gators are shot they bleed like that from internal injuries. Makes for a thrilling photo, especially for the Euro-German types who don’t live within 3,000 miles of gators. But it’s extremely unlikely that that the blood is human. Dead bodies don’t bleed and it’s extremely rare for gators to go after live humans.
W.B. Reeves
Reminds of when I was kid on vacation with my family down in Florida back before I75 was completed. We were traveling on an old Army Corps. of Engineers Hwy. when traffic came to a halt. The reason turned out to be a Rattle Snake that had been run over while crossing the road. It stretched over the better part of two lanes.
Maybe it’s just me but the Gator photo isn’t all that impressive. Doesn’t look particularly large and at a guess I’d say the blood was its own. It appears to have been shot through the head.
Mike S
Two points on the gator. Maybe it is dead but I somehow doubt that the photog went out into the zoo, shot it and then dragged it into a building. It got there somehow and if it’s the only one I would be surprised.
And the blood could be from anything. Dead bodies may not bleed, but they still have blood in them. Or it could be an animal. And it looks plenty big to me.
demimondian
Yeah, the blood on the Gator pic was too blue to be mammalian.
John S.
Zoological pundits-on-the-fly, UNITE!
But seriously, regardless of what the circumstances are surrounding this particular photo, the fact remains that gators and other ‘critters’ have got to be all over NOLA.
And gators aren’t particuarly fussy eaters. They may not be prone to going after living humans, but they won’t hesitate to devour a corpse. To quote from the above link:
tBone
I knew there was a reason I like all three of those places so much.
Detlef
Kent,
According to the accompanying article the German journalists saw that dead gator in Gulfport, Missisippi in the entrance of the “First Presbyterian Church”. They wrote that National Guard members have shot it.
jobiuspublius
The funny thing is that NOLA residents are probably used to those sites. It’s the rest of us that will want them to leave upon seeing the pictures.
Mike S
Heck, I understand that New Zealand doesn’t have any poisonous snakes or insects. That’s a place for me.
jobiuspublius
Wow, that gators got himself a bachlor pad!
DougJ
I’d be more scared if I saw Michael Brown crawling around in the sewage.
Mike S
Thanks. My German is worse than my Spanish. And I failed Spanish twice in high school.
Dave Ruddell
I think we need to reintroduce Whacking Day.
tBone
Hey, around here, every day is Whacking Day.
Oh, you didn’t mean that kind of whacking? My bad.
texas dem
So John, did you ever figure out what kind of snake it was?
I’ve been within 12″ of a rattlesnake a couple times, without knowing it until they rattled. It’s a sound that gets your attention, that’s for sure.
goonie bird
SNAKES WHY DOSE IT HAVE TO BE SNAKES? ahh the snakes are trying to getaway from the lawyers and liberal babber mouths
Stormy70
Grew up around bull snakes, so no big deal. Spiders, though creep me the hell out. I must say, the snake in the picture looks like a homicidal maniac. It wants to kill the photographer, and I hope he was using a zoom lense.
Gray Lensman
That’s a cottonmouth, a bad mama. They are poisonous, aggressive and fearless. They also have a distinct odor if you’re are close enough. I grew up in SE Texas and E. Louisiana where they are frequent around bodies of water like bayous and creeks. Got to be a lot of ’em in NO right now.
irishdrifter
Yes blissfully snake and gator free here – and you are all most welcome. I would be more scared of the Bush regime tho’, if I were you.
dlnevins
Actually, Britain does have native snakes – even a poisonous one. But their adder is uncommon, and compared to our American rattlesnakes and cottonmouths it’s a real wimp.
Greg
ROFL. John, John, John…it’s a standard cottonmouth. They’re native to the area and aren’t *that* aggressive. Really nothing to be afraid of at all. The native fauna is among the least of NOLA’s problems right now. :)
Vlad
I used to project movies for the late shift on Saturday as my work-study job in school, and one night as I staggered home from some long-ass movie that didn’t close ’til 2:30-ish (Spartacus, maybe?), I heard this strange repetitive metallic sound. When I went to investigate, I saw a janitor in hip waders using a flat-blade shovel to slice a bunch of baby copperheads into little bits, right by the side of the walkway.
Eric Scheie
Yeah, looks like an Eastern (possibly Florida) Cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus). They’re not terribly aggressive unless cornered or surprised. Leave them alone and they’ll leave you along. (Their bite is not as dangerous as the rattlesnake.) I’m surprised one would venture into a city unless it got lost or something. Was this photo taken in New Orleans since Katrina or is that anecdotal?
BTW, Cottonmouth bites are very rarely fatal (zero since 1983):
http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic539.htm
(Personally, I’m a snake aficionado, and I’d enjoy catching one of these buggers. . . But New Orleans is the last place I’d expect to find one, especially right now.)