Ack! Snake warning!

What's wrong with snakes? Especially when they're that dead?

I AM GOING TO VOMIT NOW.

This stopped me from posting in the "If you could anything right now" thread.

Ew.

No, really.

Ew.

Aw, crud. Everyone's concentrating on how little they like snakes or on how gross skinned animals are and not on the tremendous humbuggery going on there. Oh well, I think it's hilarious. Here's another of my favorite little hoaxes (not perpetrated by Seabass or myself, but another of my crafty pals.

Also, Seabass is really good at skinning things. It's always done to see what went wrong -- an autopsy -- and he usually finds the cause of death and can often take steps to prevent similar ailments in his other animals.

And his green tree pythons and emerald tree boas are fuckin' beautiful, I tells ya. Gimme a few beers and I might even handle one.

It was quite the entrance into the forum Hugh, I'll grant him that!

They had some AWESOME snakes at the Atlanta zoo. Our film roll was bad so I have zero pictures unfortunately. I want to go back to Atlanta someday just to go to that zoo. Black Mamba, some sort of huge bright white tropical rattlesnake, all sorts of big weird exotic snakes. Several of which I was surprised they even had (such as the Mamba) due to how dangerous they were.

I thought it was cool, Hugh.

Hugh: Actually, I used to love snakes. I was the kid who would make money doing weird shit, like placing baby brown snakes down into my black rubber boots.

We had a huge oak tree with a branch leaning over the neighbour's yard. They had one of those 2' tin pools so we emptied it one day and went snake hunting by the creek behind our houses. We dumped as many snakes as we could into the empty pool (now snake pit) and then challenged each other to hang over the pit by holding onto the branch by our arms.

I think it's pretty cool how quickly your friend was exposed/shedded by those folk.

That is really really gross.

It's not that gross. Anyway, only one person on the forum fell for it and felt silly after it was revealed, but yeah, it's a pretty obvious skin job and most would take his post as tongue-in-cheek, not a real attempt at a hoax. Still, I think it's beautiful with or without its skin. And funny that my friend would post it.

One time we tried to help a little bird that had been mauled by a cat, but its lungs had been punctured and its breath was frothy, so I put it out of its misery and Seabass dissected it. It was really interesting: we found all these tiny shiny bits of metal in its gut, but couldn't figure out where they came from.

we found all these tiny shiny bits of metal in its gut, but couldn't figure out where they came from

Birds eat grit -- usually rocks and dirt, though metal would suffice -- to break down their food. 'Cause a bird ain't got no teef.

They were like little tiny corkscrew metal shavings, and were quite sharp, though none of them seemed to have punctured anything. We also found the usual amount of stones and grit, but it was like this bird was hanging around a metal shop or something. The shape of the bits was quite unlike anything else I've seen in a bird's gut.

I really hated killing it, even though it was a goner, but Seabass couldn't face it at all, and the bird was definitely dying painfully. I useta work on a chicken farm (seriously) and I've killed my share of dying birds, so the stain fell on my karma.

Animals are neat, inside and out.

I dunno about other animals but they say if your dog eats glass, feed it cotton balls. Apparently the cotton wraps around the glass. Which makes sense, I guess.

Also when cows get "hardware" (eating metal such as staples, broken fence bits, etc. when grazing) they can suffer greatly and even die if you do nothing, but you can feed them these coated magnets and the metal bits will stick to the magnet instead of moving around inside of the cow and causing all sorts of problems.

I almost fell for it, like the one other person in the original post. I was just horrified for the poor thing. Growing up, we had garter(garden?) snakes in my back yard. We'd turn over a log or something, and pick one up just to look at it. Then we'd let it go. I love stuff like that. Thank God this one was dead. And nice skinning job!