My Trip

[brandonh]

to Sacramento produced this monsters of a snake

http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk243/Brandon1001_photos/RATTLESNAKEC.jpg

http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk243/Brandon1001_photos/RATTLESNAKEA.jpg

http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk243/Brandon1001_photos/RattleSnakeB.jpg

http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk243/Brandon1001_photos/RATTLESNAKEH.jpg

western diamondback rattlesnake

[snake man12]

Holy beep. He is what six feet

[alessia55]

he looks huge. what a wonderful specimen. rattlers are awesome

[brandonh]

i dont no the exact length of it because i didn't handle the snake. i would say from looking it would have to be at least very close to 5 foot and was very thick and did not once rattle.

[millertime89]

that is one big rattler.

[brandonh]

i counted 13 buttons on its rattle. it is the biggest rattle snake i have ever found in the wild. i was just happy as i could be :]

[millertime89]

buttons don't indicate the age of the snake. They get a new one every shed.

[brandonh]

that is correct
a common myth about rattle snakes

[brandonh]

and they also can break off pretty easily, i think you may have miss understood what i meant by biggest i seen i meant it was a heaviest and longest rattle snake i have found and i counted 13 buttons on it :)

[bladeblaster]

very nice :Wow:

[stephanbakir]

Great looking specimen!

[millertime89]

and they also can break off pretty easily, i think you may have miss understood what i meant by biggest i seen i meant it was a heaviest and longest rattle snake i have found and i counted 13 buttons on it :)

I gotcha, yes that's what I took it to mean.

[brandonh]

I gotcha, yes that's what I took it to mean.

ok cool =]

dose the timber rattlesnake range reach up there?

[millertime89]

was that directed at me?
we do, but I've never seen one or heard of someone having an encounter with one. I've seen praries and Western massasaugas, but never timbers

[brandonh]

it was, sorry
i have only seen 2 timber rattlers and never seen the massasauga but i hear they are in this area. i would love to see one in the wild.

[stephanbakir]

Massasaugas are cute as hell, they rarely rattle which sucks for people walking around. I find a few every year, normally from phone calls to relocate them.

[youngster]

The only hot in NH is the timber rattler. Never found one, they're really rare but I wanna see one soooo baddddd.

[millertime89]

the one massasauga I saw was sunning itself on the edge of the a forest with a slow moving creek nearby, didn't have a camera with me at the time.
the prairie I saw was in the middle of my grandfather's airstrip/horse practice area/fireworks launch pad, he was pissed.

[brandonh]

Massasaugas are cute as hell, they rarely rattle which sucks for people walking around. I find a few every year, normally from phone calls to relocate them.

i could see how people would get into trouble with a rattle snake that rarely rattles and has a good camo pattern. its a setup for a bad encounter.

The only hot in NH is the timber rattler. Never found one, they're really rare but I wanna see one soooo baddddd.

have you tried looking for timbers on rocky hill sides that are facing south or heavily wooded areas if possible?

[youngster]

have you tried looking for timbers on rocky hill sides that are facing south or heavily wooded areas if possible?

I've looked EVERYWHERE! :p They are very elusive I only know one person who has.

[brandonh]

i will agree with that they are a elusive snake too find.
the 2 i found were both in a national forest that had rocky hillsides.
the rocks i found them near were very large rocks with undercuts under them.
so maybe this can help you find one :)

[stephanbakir]

Few weeks back I got a call to remove a snake from a woodpile (this woman calls me every few weeks, shes an animal lover, and LOVES to look at snakes but they scare her so she calls me prior to removing the firewood.
Reached in to get the ribbon snake that was sitting there, the rattler struck from the corner and just missed my hand, I had NO IDEA it was there and I was rolling logs for about 5 minutes prior to this.

[brandonh]

oh my that would have been a heck of a scary encounter.

that is crazy it didn't rattle

[stephanbakir]

I'm allergic to CroFab... was fun finding that one out :P (Neurotoxic Antivenin)

[brandonh]

I'm allergic to CroFab... was fun finding that one out :P (Neurotoxic Antivenin)

May i ask how?

[snake man12]

In lehigh valley I came across a baby timber.

[stephanbakir]

I got tagged by a diamondback a few months ago doing cleaning... make sure the person holding the snakes doesn't have a habit of sneezing. (once i got injected with the crofab my tongue swelled like crazy and split down the left side lengthwise, it went down after a while but for some reason my tongue kept healing, so until about 3 weeks ago it would keep healing and pushing away the old skin and repeating, always had dead skin in my mouth. Tasted horrible and looked pretty gross, lasted months.
Tagged by a monocled cobra a few weeks later... cage defect.

[youngster]

What's the medical bills on those? :p

[brandonh]

sounds like a very rough couple of months you had there

its good to hear your doing better :)

[stephanbakir]

What's the medical bills on those? :p

Luckily I my friend who owns them is wealthy and whenever anyone gets tagged by anything he covers what our insurance wont.

[youngster]

That's awesome! But still, what'd it cost? Something that would be good to know IMO :)

[stephanbakir]

The crofab was the only part that wasn't covered, it was 350 a vial I think and I needed 4 vials, surprisingly the necrosis was mild.
The tag by the cobra was the bad one, there was a lip on the inside of the enclosure above the sliding glass just big enough for the baby to slip onto, I couldn't see him so I thought he was in the hide and when I leaned in to get the water dish he tagged me on the neck.
Took 6 vials even though he was a baby, poly was 350 a vial and it sucked. I'm more or less done working with hots these days, I help him pull moms off eggs occasionally, but recently its been rearfanged snakes like fwc and mangroves, I learned my lesson.

[youngster]

Oh, that's not as bad as I thought price wise. But I still wouldn't wanna get tagged! (Obviously!) :p

[stephanbakir]

If the medical bills for the necrosis and other stuff came out of my pocket that number would have been MUCH higher. I don't even know what they were.

[youngster]

Yeah I'm not saying the price is low, I'm just saying it's lower than I thought.

[brandonh]

i agree 350 is lower then i thought too. just x4 is not so cheap