Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 00:38:18 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Steve Huy Subject: Re: Snakes vs. Birds? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 7/9/03 7:32:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Warblerick@AOL.COM writes: > My daughter was ahead of me, and she walked right past a sleeping, > coiled Copperhead, which was right beside the main trail but off to > the side just past a row of weeds. I saw it and pointed it out, took > some photos, > pointed it out to the folks behind us, and left it. When we came back up the > trail a few hours later, it was still right there, asleep in the sun. My brother and I were birding along the C&O near Point of Rocks several summers ago. Suddenly my brother launched himself vertically about three feet and landed with his legs spread wide. Between his feet lay a stretched out copperhead about 30 inches long. Not to be like Steve Irwin or Jeff Corwin, I did pick up the snake to move it off the trail for its own protection from bikes or perhaps birders. :-) I did take the opportunity to study this freshly shed specimen while I held it. The colors and natural camo were as beautiful as that of any bird. And I appreciated this creature as being the most rare sighting of the day, and perhaps year. I once did the same with a timber rattler I found on a path regularly travelled by horse near Roanoake, VA. (I advise that no attempt be made to handle venomous snakes without extensive experience in handling snakes - they can be dangerous even to experienced handlers and I more often find it safer to chase them off trails and raods rather than pick them up). But my first rattler was seen on a camping trip in PA many years ago. My brother had found it and called me to confirm what it was (I think I was about 8 at the time). It was the largest rattler I have ever seen. My dad came along and killed it. Later Dad had a talk with us. He said he didn't know why he killed that snake, but had done it just because that's what people always did with them. He expressed his regret for having done so and said it was not necessarily the right thing to do even though the ranger's were praising him for it. I had been disappointed the snake had been killed and was really proud of my dad for telling us his feelings about it later. I think that had a lot to do with my current opinion of all wildlife. I better make sure I tell him how proud I was of him that day. I've always been a poor birder and half the reason is because I spend so much time looking down and under things for "creepy-crawly" critters. Steve ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================