I had a friend who was hiking in the mountains carefully caught one and carried back down so he could properly skin and save the meat. Of course this was the same friend who had a couple of pet tarantulas too!
Yes I've had some strange friends, but that's ok.

That's the stuff nightmares are made of.

You REALLY take recycling serious! lol

Won't happen in my house! You must show photos though!

I'd love to se the pics when you are finished. I won't be doing it myself though. shed skin or not it is still a SNAKE!

usually i just wander and lurk. have several Board threads bkmarked to follow. but for the snake i needed to log in

bubonic plague was carried around this planet by fleas on rats from cargo ships. aprox 1/3 of world population died. snakes eat rats. some varieties, like king snakes, eat venomous snakes, like rattle snakes. pretty little garter snakes eat bugs and insect larva like those of mosquitos - mosquitos that carry west nile virus that kill our horses & our elderly humans. snakes eat mice - hanta virus is in mouse urine & feces. hanta virus kills humans. fellow quilter here locally, lost her beloved sister-in-law last summer to hanta virus. she was sick for a week or so. lived in beautiful gated retirement community in northern washington state.

my puppy almost trampled young snake yesterday. stretched long in freshly watered grass in cooler afternoon sun. beautiful glistening skin of motteled brown and tan. i carefully examined it & of course it's tail. not a rattler. i really would rather that the rattlers continue thier important work of clearing out the overpopulation of desert rats, rats, mice and the aggressively reproducing california quail that is overwhelming and taking over forage and nesting of native game birds here in eastern washington state.

i could go on & on, but bottom line - snakes, our first line of defense against insects and rodents that carry deadly disease, eat our grain supplies, cause fatal electrical fires from eating insulation off the house wiring, eat roots of our food producing fruit and nut trees. snakes, much maligned & misunderstood beauties of our natural world.

all that said, i don't want to be close to and am most wary of and respectful of venemous snakes. the SE USA is incredible...won't live there, i need to be outside all the time. coral snakes, cotton mouths, the largest of the rattlesnake family - the eastern rattlesnake, copperheads... a few more pit vipers than we have here in the hot dry arid west.

and yes, rattlesnake is excellent skinned and grilled over open camp fire. excellent source of clean fat free protien. no bones. and it doesn't "taste like chicken" anymore than blue fin shark does, tho much easier to skin.

my brothers and i captured & played w terantulas. friends kept them as pets. another useful and important creatire of our natural world in insect control.

i don't like arachnids - probably because they are quiet and i don't know where they are. difficult to be wary of the unseen. i have loved and been fascinated by snakes since teen years when moved out of city enviornment into rural farm country and encountered my first snakes. even kept them for a while at times, to watch and observe, then release.

i don't ask or expect anyone to like or admire them as i & many others do. but i do ask that they not be used as target practice...just because you don't like them. with the man & natural change in our planets enviornment of rising temperatures etc, reptiles of all kinds from frogs to snakes are on decline due to heat & increased intensity of UV rays. we need them...we need to protect them. i don't eat rattle snakes anymore. my hiking bpacking days are in the past. and they aren't as plentiful now anyway.

which is so sad.

my newest love in my local reptile world. i knew bullsnakes in new jersey, huge and wonderful. but not as small & beautifully marked as the local variety where i currently live.

bullsnake native to SCE Washington State

Beautiful snake picture, here in NM we have lots of snakes and I hope they don't disappear as we also have plague and Hanta virus in this state.

great post. i can appreciate your opinions. Still, for me, the stuff nightmares are made from ;-) I remember walking through the woods when I was younger, and a snake fell out of the tree and hit me. lol, shocking to say the least. i was used to looking for them on the ground.

I have a couple more snake stories to share ;-) I've never killed one, but they have come close to killing me a couple of times, sometimes by close encounters of an unexpected nature, be still my heart.

Okay to each his own. I don't want one for a pet & any we see in the yard we just run out unless it is poisonous. Had a friend many years ago that had a 12 foot Boa. Have many pictures of the snake & myself. Would love to see what you make. Now that being said I would wonder where the snake went or is. LOL.

wow...that would be more than just frightening. where were you? i see you live in northern CA now. i am not familiar w any species of snake that climbs into trees as they do in south & southeastern US.

i guess we all have our things that give us nightmares. tho i think the varieties and beauty of spiders is interesting. they are definitely can be the stuff of my nightmares. we humans have so much fun with jokes and movies of our more threatening fellow beings on this planet. lions & tigers & snakes & spiders oh my.

i have snake stories too. decided to go exploring one day...not dressed for the hills, but that is where i ended up. in shorts and flip flops...coming out of abandoned mine shaft, dog charging ahead as usual. just as i was about to put my foot down, paused at a sound, looked down - baby rattle snake skittering away as fast as it could. even dangerous creatures react in fear to the unknown. other than to eat, the only rattlers i have killed were in self defense of a sort...once irrigating olive orchard a small one just wouldn't accept my relocation attemps for it. once in my garden in the hi country of california mountains, coming home fr work late at night w flashlight in hand, there was a rattler who was almost every night warming himself on the back steps. on a day off, i removed that threat. was told then by locals to watch for it's mate. i never saw it. that was when i learned a most fascinating faq - rattlesnakes mate for life. wow.