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I grew up with snakes in Texas from Water Moccasins and Coral snakes to Diamond Backs... they aren't safe, if you're sleeping on the ground, walking around in b

by kurthr 10y ago

I grew up with snakes in Texas from Water Moccasins and Coral snakes to Diamond Backs... they aren't safe, if you're sleeping on the ground, walking around in brush and can't see, or are climbing a rock wall you can easily be bitten. It's easy to get thrown from a horse too. The worst are young children and pets who don't know better, which can be killed or lose a limb, especially by a baby rattler (they don't strike and release... keep pumping poison), if you're not within 30min of a hospital. Most hospitals don't carry anti-venom any more either, because it's expensive and it goes bad. I saw a 2-3foot (baby no rattle) western diamond back cruise through our camp of ~20 people, 3 children <6yr, and 2 dogs at 5pm over last Perseid weekend. It wasn't safe, and I was much more careful walking in the brush after. No one tried to kill it, but I'd put the chance of it biting someone/dog at more than 1/100 not 1/100k!! We never saw Mama.

ChuckMcM 10y ago
This is similar to my experience spending a lot of time in the desert areas of the south western US. Basically there were things you could do that would exponentially increase your likelihood of being bitten. Examples being sticking your hand under rocks or into holes. Understanding that snakes moderate their body temperature by moving from shade to sun to shade again allows you to quickly see spots that a snake would find attractive. Usually a surface in the early morning or late evening sunlight, next to a place where a snake could be in the shade but have some awareness of its surroundings. Once you figure that out, you can easily spot places that snakes would like to hang out and either avoid them, or as I was prone to do in my youth, go find them.
nxzero 10y ago
In the United States you have about a one in 50 million chance of dying from snake bite; five people die a year from snake bites. Cars alone kill 100k to million snakes a year; not to mention how many people they kill too. Please stay in the city if your afraid of animals.
- BearOso 10y ago
  Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/795/ https://xkcd.com/795/ If you never leave an urban area, your chances are even lower than one in 50 million. But if you live in a house on this particular lake, how many orders of magnitude does that chance increase if they dump thousands of snakes nearby?
  - nxzero 10y ago
    Only 5 people a year are killed by snakes, while tens of thousands are killed by cars. As for having 1000s of snake nearby, no, I don't think it would make for any meaningful increase in danger; I've seen someone go into a cave full of thousands of rattlesnakes; hint, nothing bad happened. If you read the notes on the link below, most of the deaths sound avoidable; aka leave snakes alone, know how to treat a snake bite, get medical attention, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in...
    - ivanhoe 10y ago
      Well, I'm sure people would also object if someone decides to bring thousands of cars to their neighbourhood :) Speaking of snakes (or any other dangerous animal) it's not a fair statistics to count in just the deadly encounters. One should take into the account also how much the local population had to modify their behaviour to avoid those attacks. Statistics say that sharks rarely attack people, but also it's a fact that people don't go that often into the water in the areas with dangerous shark populations. Same thing with other dangerous animals like gators or poisonous spiders or scorpions. You learn to avoid risky behaviour and take extra care of pets and children, so stats of deadly attacks are low, but it comes at extra cost for people living there not being able to be relaxed and do things they otherwise would be doing.

by kurthr 10y ago

ChuckMcM 10y ago

This is similar to my experience spending a lot of time in the desert areas of the south western US. Basically there were things you could do that would exponentially increase your likelihood of being bitten. Examples being sticking your hand under rocks or into holes. Understanding that snakes moderate their body temperature by moving from shade to sun to shade again allows you to quickly see spots that a snake would find attractive. Usually a surface in the early morning or late evening sunlight, next to a place where a snake could be in the shade but have some awareness of its surroundings. Once you figure that out, you can easily spot places that snakes would like to hang out and either avoid them, or as I was prone to do in my youth, go find them.

nxzero 10y ago

In the United States you have about a one in 50 million chance of dying from snake bite; five people die a year from snake bites. Cars alone kill 100k to million snakes a year; not to mention how many people they kill too. Please stay in the city if your afraid of animals.

BearOso 10y ago
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/795/ https://xkcd.com/795/ If you never leave an urban area, your chances are even lower than one in 50 million. But if you live in a house on this particular lake, how many orders of magnitude does that chance increase if they dump thousands of snakes nearby?
- nxzero 10y ago
  Only 5 people a year are killed by snakes, while tens of thousands are killed by cars. As for having 1000s of snake nearby, no, I don't think it would make for any meaningful increase in danger; I've seen someone go into a cave full of thousands of rattlesnakes; hint, nothing bad happened. If you read the notes on the link below, most of the deaths sound avoidable; aka leave snakes alone, know how to treat a snake bite, get medical attention, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in...
  - ivanhoe 10y ago
    Well, I'm sure people would also object if someone decides to bring thousands of cars to their neighbourhood :) Speaking of snakes (or any other dangerous animal) it's not a fair statistics to count in just the deadly encounters. One should take into the account also how much the local population had to modify their behaviour to avoid those attacks. Statistics say that sharks rarely attack people, but also it's a fact that people don't go that often into the water in the areas with dangerous shark populations. Same thing with other dangerous animals like gators or poisonous spiders or scorpions. You learn to avoid risky behaviour and take extra care of pets and children, so stats of deadly attacks are low, but it comes at extra cost for people living there not being able to be relaxed and do things they otherwise would be doing.