My Wife Had a Visitor

Roger Tulk said:

When my wife and I visited Harper's Ferry, years and years ago, one of the things I remember is a dark coloured snake swimming vigourously upstream in a brook. Judging by the reading I just did, this was likely a cottonmouth, no?

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Cottonmouths aren't all that common in that area. It was probably another (but non-poisonous) variety of water snake. There are several varieties of them that do thrive there.

My oldest son, Greg, was into reptiles. We had a 5 ft Calif. King that frequently had the run of the house. He/she loved to hang on the dining room chandelier. One time I picked her/him up to take to the terrarium and the snake bit me in the right forearm. I just carried it on down to Greg's bedroom and slipped it down into the terrarium and convinced it that it wanted to stay.

It turned out that the snake had cut its belly on a sharp part of the terrarium cover as it escaped for the day. When I picked it up, my fingers went right into the cut and it did not like that. Other than that one incident, no one in the family had any problem with any of Greg's snakes. Myrna made him return the rattlesnake the next day---that was definitely not a keeper.

That is NOT bravery, it is KNOWLEDGE. Snakes are clean (much cleaner than dogs, cats, birds, etc.). The snake was not a poisonous variety. I knew I was not going to be injected by the fangs with anything that was going to bother me. Most snakes are very beneficial to mankind.

I suppose now is not a good time to mention George.

Enjoy,
JimB