Snake in the barn/how do I get it out?

GeneD14 · May 20, 2005

We need some one to do a scientific study. Like the one Bob did a few months back that carefully documented the difference between curved and angled loader arms. Variables that would need to be tested are: slinging in a circle vs whip like action, long vs short snake.

LMTC · May 21, 2005

( You don't just swing it around in a circle; you have to pop it like a whip to break its neck. )
I would bet this would work....except that in doing so you would have to allow that head to get pretty close to you, and any little misplacement or mis-swing could slap that sucker's head right up against one's own. I'm not averse to snakes, but I prefer them at the end of a collection stick. I remember as a kid trying to use a bull-whip, and punishing myself severely for my lack of coordination. That whip at me up.

( I heard a long time ago that if you grab a snake by it's tail and sling it around in a big circle the force will make it's head pop. ) I imagine the Gs could become fairly intense, but if it does "pop", where is all that venom going? Any of that stuff in your eyes, nose, mouth, is a serious problem. And if it doesn't work, you will have one seriously whizzed off, albeit intensly dizzy, snake on your hands.

I used to collect snakes for milking and other purposes for a herpetology professor at UC...many decades ago. Mostly in what is now Shawnee FOrest in SE Ohio. We would typically get a dozen or so copperheads and several timber rattlers on a Saturday. Don't recall ever finding a water moccasin or the eastern massasauga.

EddieWalker · May 21, 2005

The snake is there for a reason. Dinner. Get rid of the food source, and it will go someplace else. I'm terrified of snakes. I've had one encounter when cleaning up some scraps of wood I'd cut the night before. It scared me pretty good!!! Later, I saw some mouse droppings, so I figured why the the snake was around. I poison and trap the mice on a regular basis. No mice means no snakes!