Story Time, oh oh a Snake
 

hahahah did I scare you with the snake? Ok, hubby comes in from the yard (he is always out there lol) and in his hand he is holding a beautiful translucent snake shed skin.

He said that this shed is only a day old. It was clean and all in one piece. I said, I want it!! I was thinking to make a snake for a snake doll or make the doll using the actual skin shed.

Ok for those who don't know about a snake skin shed. The snake sheds it's skin every so often, it just wiggles out of it and leaves it where it falls lol.

I got a glass jar and put equal amounts of glycerin and rubbing alcohol and coiled the shed and put it in the mixture and sealed the jar. Now it has to rest in a dark place for three days and then it's hung to dry and it's cured and can be handled, it is very delicate in it's present stage.

I already have an idea of how to make this snake doll. She is probably going to be a snake queen lol. I hope I am successful with the shed and that it cures right. I will keep you updated and any info anybody has is welcome.

Oh my goodness! :shock:
Well, to each her own, I guess!:eek:
Anything to do with that 5 letter word is just.....gross!:D

Jan in VA

Omg! I have 2 snake skins, each about 8 feet long. Oh, hubby had a python and a boa constrictor (well both are constrictors, really). I always wanted to do something with them. They are carefully wrapped in tissue and in a mason jar. I would love to see a picture when you get the skin cured and when the doll is done.

I'm w/Jan in VA. Get thee away from me, snake! We were digging sweet potatoes in the garden a few yrs ago and baby snakes came crawling out of the dirt by the dozens. My heart is still pounding!

I know some people actually have PET snakes, and I certainly don't want to offend anyone. HOWEVER....in my humble opinion, the only thing most of them are good for is moving targets to practice shooting....(sorry, I can't stand them!!) Please remember that I said, in MY HUMBLE OPINION......:)

very interesting! thanks for sharing

Not that I would want to make one for myself, but I will be interested to see what you come up with. Keep us posted.

OMG my phobia. I hope I never see even a picture of one!

Right there with you, sister!!!

I've heard all creatures have their purposes - that doesn't mean I want to have a close personal relationship with some of them!

I didn't know that the shed skin could be used - I just assumed that they were fragile and broke up in a day or two and just vanished into the ground.

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.

i also find it interesting that new to us diseases like hanta are being discovered. i remember reading about the first hanta outbreaks and the mystery of what it was. we now have hanta in wa. and it is in other states now too. there are several deaths a year in wa from bubonic plague. also in other states, tho it will probably never be seen in massive outbreaks again as we now can treat it, if caught in time. but, w the dramatic decline in reptiles in recent decades, the return or arrival of deadly diseases carried by vecters like mosquitos & rodents - food sources for frogs, lizards & snakes..who are in sharp decline, suffering strange mutations...make me worry. what comes next. and...how do we fix it.

Sounds like a neat idea! I used to go hunt and live capture garter snakes with my dad in our backyard when I was a kid. Our house was a new suburb with the farmer's house and several acres still behind our house. There were also rabbits around. Since that was almost 50 years ago, I wonder what the area is like now?

I have always enjoyed snakes and now my little 2 year old Granddaughter recently went to the zoo, and your guessed it, her favorite thing was the "nakes!". She liked the train ride too.

I think some human beings are probably more to be feared than almost any other creature. (Boston bombings, 9/11, that building in TX several years ago)

Most 'other' creatures - as far as I know - don't go out of their way to cause massive harm to others - most of their 'attack' - if any - are one on one for self-preservation.

I still prefer snakes, spiders, tarantulas, etc. to stay away from me. (Or me away from them)

sounds interesting but sorry i wouldn't touch it. the only ones i touch are rubber snakes. we almost had a young home inspector have a heart attack one day though. in the yard our home we put out rubber snakes that looked real to keep the birds out of the yard cause the cats were getting them when they came into thier patio area.( they had thier own patio fenced in and not allowed to roam) anyway we forgot to mention it when the guy was taking pictures of the house and all of a sudden I turn and see this poor guy jump about 3 feet in the air. at least he had a good sense of humor about it after he calmed down. i don't he will ever forget his trip up the pass the the high desert that day from los angeles.

Good for you Rosy. I think snakes are beautiful. I have a good size copperhead living in my pond right now. It is in full spring color. Must have recently shed. living in the woods I do worry about poisonous snakes.

I had the bright idea of putting a small floating platform in the pond hoping I could get some mallards to nest. What I got was the copperhead all nestled up on top of the straw island.

The straw Island is now gone. Snake will have to find another home.

Looking forward to see your creation.
peace

sounds beautiful. when my son was about 4-5 I made him a bunch of dolls, one was a snake kind with a turban of a snake at the head. can't wait to see what you do

We had our snakes for about 4 years. Great pets. Don't have to be fed every day. No need to walk them. They are quiet. Won't scratch the furniture. I heard a saying that dogs are excited when you get home, cats look at you and wonder why you came home so soon , and snakes don't know, don't care.

We have snakes here at our home too. DH finds the skin all the time, once under our back porch that is enclosed. Gave me the willies as I prefer snakes much further away. I always save the skin for my DGC, they like to see them.

Oh boy did I open a can of worms (snakes) hahahahahahah..This turned out to be a nice topic after all lol. I don't care to have snakes for pets, nor do I need to hold or pet them lol, but I do respect them as one of God's creatures that have a right to live and do what they do best. I don't believe in keeping any wild animal caged either. I don't go to the Zoo for the same reason, it makes me sad.

I am only afraid of the poisonous kind of snake and we don't have those here. I know of a black snake and a brown snake that I saved as a baby. They live in the yard and come and go, no big deal. Sometimes I don't see them for ages. I have no idea how long a brown snake lives, so I don't know if it's the same one. I know when he is around by my neighbor's piecing screams lol

I did have to kill a snake once, many years ago, let me tell you the story.

My darling little Buttons (dog) had her first litter of puppies under my car in the garage and this is the place she choose to have them and was very happy there.

One morning, I heard her barking and the barking sounded stressful. I opened the kitchen door just in time to shoo a huge brown snakes, with what I thought were diamonds on his back. I thought it was poisonous. It came to eat the puppies. I ran and opened the garage door and got a shovel and got on top of the car parked outside the door and kept hitting the area where the snake got under. Finally he venture out and I chopped his head off with the shovel, screaming the whole time.

I was sorry to do it but I was in protect mode and that snake would come back again, I am sure. Our neighborhood was a bit woodsy at that time but now is all built up. I guess the snake came out of the woods.

I don't remember if he had a rattler or not. I had to save my puppies. Why couldn't he find some mice to eat. I am sure there were plenty in the woods.

Anyway, The skin shed comes out of it's brind on Monday afternoon, then it's hang up to dry and it should then be durable. I have ideas but need to think more of how I am going to do this snake queen. When I do start, I will post it.

Well, I am so glad you came out of lurk and shared so much information. I enjoyed the read.

Roguequilter, thank you for taking the time to educate people. I agree that we need snakes and need to respect the natural world.

Rosyhf, thanks for starting this thread. I'll look forward to seeing what you create with them.

I have a yard full of lizards, they are everywhere and they all know me and never run away no matter how close I get lol...I like them because I think some time ago they were dragons.

I hear you about the usefulness of snakes with regard to vermin. Thanks for posting.

I wish I had a hungry snake around here. I bought a new-to-me year old Rav4 and it is parked out front on the gravel. It evidently has a sign saying Welcome, All Mice Enter Here. Somehow, they get into the interior of the car, in the glove box, all over the inside of the car, drop their calling cards all over, chewed a hole in my owner's manual padded cover and are way too smart for any good use. Any trap I put in there, they manage to get the bait and not trip the trap. I have tried four different kind of traps, a small dab of peanut butter in the middle of the largest glue board I can find and still have only gotten one of them with the last mentioned item. I put dry bait in a drink lid and they either eat it all and survive or have it stashed somewhere for posterity. They have chewed a small hole in the carpeting and have gotten used to mothball smell that kept them out for a while do not mind peppermint essential old on cotton balls, which was almost guaranteed to keep them away. I am at my wits end. Please, snakes, come and get them before I die of Hanta virus.

ewwwwww!! You are a lot more adventurous than me

Sounds like this still bothers you quilt a bit. You have a soft heart and strong sensibility . Very sad when interaction with the 'wild' things of the world ends in a sad way. My heart sympathizes with you.
peace

I love people who make use of everything and anything. You're braver then I am though. It would take a miracle for me to even touch it. I can't wait to see pics when you post the finished item.

This happened in Arkansas ;-)