far too many uses of the snakes label

That hissing in the kitchen? Snake!!!

Wed Nov 25, 9:01 pm ET

LAKEBAY, Wash. – Betty Corey first thought the hissing from her Lakebay, Wash., kitchen might be one of her dogs. Wrong. It was a 4-foot-long ball python. Not a fan of snakes, Corey called 911 and a Pierce County Animal Control officer removed the snake Tuesday morning. Officer Brian Boman said the agency will house the snake at its shelter, keeping it warm and close at hand if its owner is looking for it.

Boman says it's likely a pet that escaped from a nearby house. He notes it needs a temperature between 80 and 85 degrees and couldn't survive long in the wild this time of year.

Corey said the snake likely slithered into her home through the doggie door.

___

Information from: KING-TV, http://www.king5.com/

You can't make this stuff up!

Person reportedly bitten by 2 snakes at same time

ublished: October 27, 2009

Updated: 10/27/2009 08:54 pm

Related Links

* Guide to Florida snakes
* Tips to get along with snakes
* Info on treating bites

TAMPA - John Agan was doubly unlucky Tuesday – he got bit by not one but two snakes.

Doctors think one was a coral snake and the other was a pygmy rattler.

The bites happened when Agan was out with his dog at about 1:45 p.m. outside the Masters Inn at U.S. 92 and State Road 579.

His dog was near the hotel trash bin. Agan, who was wearing sandals, was standing near some boards when he got bit by two snakes at the same time.

A coral snake bit his right shin and a pygmy rattlesnake bit the top of his right foot, Agan said.

"At first when I felt the initial pinch I thought maybe it was the boards that came together because they're stacked on top of each other,'' Agan said. "But you know, I looked down. Shoot ! I knocked it off. And I noticed the other snake down on my foot and I'm going crazy, I mean, this is really wild to have two snakes like that.''

Hillsborough County Fire Rescue emergency crews responded to the scene and took Agan to the hospital.

The crew searched for the snakes but didn't find them, said Ray Yeakley, a fire rescue spokesman.

"That doesn't mean they weren't there," Yeakley said. "It just means they weren't there when we were there."

Agan said he isn't feeling, well, snake-bit about his double snake bites.

"What can I say? It's Florida,'' Agin said. "I was born and raised here. And I'll die here. Hopefully not by a snake bite.''

Reporter José Patiño Girona can be reached at (813) 259-7659.

HAHAHA

Norwegian caught with 24 reptiles taped to body

OSLO (Reuters) – A man was caught by Norwegian customs carrying a tarantula in his bag, and a further 14 royal pythons and 10 albino leopard geckos taped to his body, media reported on Monday.

The 22-year-old Norwegian was stopped in a routine check by Kristiansand customs after arriving on a ferry from Denmark, newspaper Faedrelandsvennen reported.

Customs found the tarantula, before deciding to give him a full body search that revealed 14 stockings -- one for each snake -- taped around his torso, top selling tabloid VG said.

Reptile smuggling is not uncommon in Norway, which prohibits people holding many reptile species as pets, but office manager Helge Breilid at Kristiansand customs was quoted by VG as saying customs officers had been "horrified" by Sunday's catch.

"Customs officers quickly realised the man was smuggling animals, because his whole body was in constant motion," Breilid told VG.

When the man dropped his pants, the officers found 10 cans taped to his legs, each containing a lizard, he said.

The man was still being held by police on Monday, Kristiansand police attorney Johann Martin Kile told VG, adding he would be released upon agreeing to pay a 12,500 Norwegian crowns (1,380 pounds) fine.

The reptiles were handed over to a security firm until Norwegian authorities decide what to do with them, Breilid said.

(Reporting by Richard Solem)
===

I have never heard of La Carrera Panamericana until today. It's a cross country race through mexico going from north to south. Badass! Here's a cool blog from one of the drivers.

Why is "Snakes, snakes everywhere" even a tag?

The Buzzcocks have some spectacular guitar riffs! Of course I've known this for a while, I am, believe or not, alive to some extent. Anyway this song came on when I was getting wood in the van today. Wait what?

Fiction Romance - Buzzcocks

I'm pretty sure that these guys should be allowed to club whatever baby animal they want solely based to their contribution of awesome riffage.
---
SEE I'M NOT CRAZY
Invading giant snakes threaten U.S. wilderness areas
By Jim Loney
MIAMI (Reuters) – Burmese pythons and other giant snakes imported as pets could endanger some of America's most important parks and wilderness areas if they are allowed to multiply, according to a report released on Tuesday.

Wildlife experts say the Burmese python is distributed across thousands of square miles in south Florida. There could be tens of thousands in the Everglades, a wildlife refuge that is home to the Florida panther and other endangered species.

The Burmese python and four other non-native snakes -- boa constrictors, yellow anacondas, northern and southern African pythons -- are considered "high-risk" threats to the health of U.S. ecosystems because they eat native birds and animals, the U.S. Geological Survey report said.

Two species, the boa constrictor and Burmese python, have already established breeding populations in south Florida and experts have found "strong evidence" that the northern African python may be breeding in the wild as well.

Four other snakes, the reticulated python, green anaconda, Beni anaconda and Deschauensee's anaconda, are considered "medium-risk" but are still potentially serious threats, the USGS report said.

Florida wildlife officials say the Everglades wetland is a dumping ground for pet owners who find their snakes too large to handle when they mature. They eat birds, reptiles, rodents and other small mammals and are considered a major threat to endangered species like the wood stork and Key Largo woodrat.

GIANT SNAKES

"This report clearly reveals that these giant snakes threaten to destabilize some of our most precious ecosystems and parks, primarily through predation on vulnerable native species," Robert Reed, a USGS invasive species scientist, said in a statement.

The snakes are among the largest in the world. Three of the nine species can reach lengths of 20 feet (6 metres) and weigh more than 200 pounds (90 kg), the report said.

The reticulated python is the world's longest snake and the green anaconda is the heaviest, the scientists said, and both have been found in south Florida, although it was not certain if they are breeding.

Some of the snakes, including the boa constrictor and northern African python, are tolerant of urban living and already live wild in the Miami suburbs, the report said.

Scientists said the threat to humans from giant snakes in the wild is small.

A 2-year-old Florida girl was strangled this summer by a pet Burmese python that escaped from a holding tank in the child's home.

State wildlife managers recently allowed hunters to kill invasive snakes. Legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Congress to ban the importation of some constrictors and the Humane Society of the United States recently said it supported laws to stop the importation of and trade in large reptiles.

(Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Sandra Maler)

Whatta tease

So in one of my notebooks it says "make cd for:" and it has a few people I know, it is written in drunken writing, which doesn't look that different to the untrained eye than my regular handwriting. That's what I did today! Here's the list:
Man in the Street - Don Drummond
Land of the Freak - King Khan & the Shriners. I fucking love this track! It's one of the best road trip/tour songs ever.
She's So Fine - Easybeats. I just heard the Easybeats for the first time last week. Great old school rock and roll, the kind of thing that would've been a rousing spiritual in an earlier time.
Lonesome Road Blues - Old Crow Medicine Show. This track is a bummer, it's great. This is a country song, or something, but I have decided that the genre that fits it better is "Drinking whiskey music."
Scared Trickster - Sonic Youth
Fix Me - Black Flag. The riffs in this song are so mean that they are impossible not to like.
Career Opportunities - The Clash
Alice - Pogo. Pogo remixes old disney songs and makes them super cool dance tracks.
Alphabets - Gza.
Feeding Frenzy - Early Man. THE POWER OF THE RIFF COMPELS ME. I cannot understand what's happening to me/my flesh is rotting and my eyes just cannot see/i cry for help but no one is listening to me/ im shutting down to let the darkness set me free/ the feeding frenzy deep inside my mind taking over/ an evil shadow lurks and pulls me down below/
Tristeza (Goodby Sadness) - Sergio Mendes. Everybody samba! Wait is that a verb? Who cares?
Me Name Jr. Gong - Damian Marley. Great song. I swear to god I was hearing it a few days go, but I don't remember where it was coming from, which is weird because I only have it on mp3.
Esta Noche - Panteon Rococo
Free - Cat Power. I'm surprised there isn't a super techno dance remix by DJ Cokestash or something.
Farewell - Boris. This fits in the music genre of "Turn it up way loud."
Aero Dynamik - Kraftwerk
Ceolakanth Is Android - Polysics. This is a remix by MSTRKFT, it's killer. Also I sorta break one of the unspoken rules of my mix cds by having this and the previous song back to back.
Tiger Mountain Peasant Song - First Aid Kit. Every once in a while there's a cover that is better than the original and this is one of them. I love the bird sounds and stuff in the background.
No Fun - The Stooges.
Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above - CSS. A remix of the song by Spank Rock who makes some super booty rap.
Barbarian - Electric Wizard "You think you're civilized, but you will never understand"
Silver and Gold - Joe Strummer

i cannot believe that i

bought a WoW 60 day card today. That's 15 PBRs at Goldies, plus tip! Or one night of drunken reverly; however, I have 60 days of running around stabbing things and collection loot! Sweet loot!

Lurid story time: Twin brothers share the same profession, one that isn't some panty waisted, limp wristed, sorry excuse for a career, no these men are manly men. The kind of men that make Chuck Norris sweat. Do they work at an offshore oil rig? Are they cowboys? A black ops sniper team? No. These twin brothers are... Luchadores. Not only were they Luchadores they are La Parkita and Espectrito II, that's right, they are midget wrestlers. So these guys pick some girls up and they go back to the hotel room they rented out after a wild night of partying. After a while the girls, who are presumed to be prostitutes, leave the premises. When the brothers don't answer the housecleaning call the manager is summoned, he enters the room to make a ghastly discovery: two small, stripped, blanched bodies lie in their respective beds, no valuables are found. Espectrito II nor La Parkita have any signs of assault on their bodies so the coppers pin the probable cause of death as poisoning. It seems that vicious gangs of prostitutes in Mexico City have been doing this kind of thing for a while now, doping up the johns who hire them out to rob them, sometimes the johns die, as is the case here. Crazy. Sources! 1(spanish), 2, 3 (spanish). It is pretty bad, but it has great story elements in it! Just all of it! I can see the smoke filled bar now!

Pet Python Strangles Child, Officials Say
By MIKE SCHNEIDER, AP

OXFORD, Fla. (July 1) – A pet Burmese python measuring more than 8 feet long broke out of a terrarium and strangled a 2-year-old girl in her bedroom Wednesday at a central Florida home, authorities said. Shaiunna Hare was already dead when paramedics arrived at about 10 a.m., Lt. Bobby Caruthers of the Sumter County Sheriff's Office said.
Charles Jason Darnell, the snake's owner and the boyfriend of Shaiunna's mother, discovered the snake missing from its terrarium and went to the girl's room, where he found it on the girl and bite marks on her head, Caruthers said. Darnell, 32, stabbed the snake until he was able to pry the child away.
"The baby's dead!" a sobbing caller from the house screamed to a 911 dispatcher in a recording. "Our stupid snake got out in the middle of the night and strangled the baby."
Authorities did not identify the caller and removed the person's name from the recording.
"She got out of the cage last night and got into the baby's crib and strangled her to death," the caller said.
Authorities removed the snake from the home Wednesday afternoon after obtaining a search warrant. Once outside the small, tan home, bordered by cow pastures, the snake was placed in a bag then inside a dog crate. The snake was still alive.
Darnell did not have a permit for the snake, which would be a second-degree misdemeanor, said Joy Hill, a spokeswoman with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. He has not been charged, but Caruthers said investigators were looking into whether there was child neglect or if any other laws were broken.
Hill said the snake will be placed with someone who has a permit, pending an investigation into the girl's death.

I'm pretty sure kids get eaten by snakes in most tropical zone around the world. The reason that it's shocking is because it happened here in the United States. But this cavalier attitude is really just a defense mechanism because deep down inside I am aghast at the situation. Nah.

Today I stepped on a nail. If I had been a quarter of an inch to the right, the nail would have gone through my big toe. Luckily I got away with a small gouge that just left a spot of blood on my sock.

Everglades swamped with invading pythons

By Jim Loney Jim Loney – Thu May 28, 5:38 pm ET

THE EVERGLADES, Florida (Reuters) – The population of Burmese pythons in Florida's Everglades may have grown to as many as 150,000 as the non-native snakes make a home and breed in the fragile wetlands, officials said Thursday.

Wildlife biologists say the troublesome invaders -- dumped in the Everglades by pet owners who no longer want them -- have become a pest and pose a significant threat to endangered species like the wood stork and Key Largo woodrat.

"They eat things that we care about," said Skip Snow, an Everglades National Park biologist, as he showed a captured, 15-foot (4.6-meter) Burmese python to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who was on his first fact-finding mission to the Everglades since the Obama administration took office.

With Snow maintaining a strong grip on its head, the massive snake hissed angrily at Salazar and the other federal officials who gathered around it at a recreation area off Alligator Alley in the vast saw grass prairie. It took two other snake wranglers to control the python's body.

"A snake this size could eat a small deer or a bobcat without too much trouble," Snow told Salazar before the secretary boarded an airboat for a tour of the Everglades.

Everglades biologists have been grappling with the growing python problem for a decade. The snakes are one of the largest species in the world and natives of Southeast Asia, but they found a home to their liking in the Everglades when pet owners started using the wetland as a convenient dumping ground.

"They're fine when they're small but they can live 25 to 30 years. When they get bigger you have to feed them small animals like rabbits, and cleaning up after them, it's like cleaning up after a horse," Snow said. "People don't want big snakes."

TRAPPERS AND HUNTERS

Pythons captured in the Everglades are often killed. Wildlife officials are trying trapping and other eradication methods, and are considering offering bounties to hunters. Scientists are experimenting with ways to lure the snakes into traps, including the use of pheromones -- chemicals that serve as sexual attractants -- as bait.

"They are estimating there are 150,000 of these snakes. They proliferate so quickly," said Florida Senator Bill Nelson, who accompanied Salazar on the airboat tour of the Everglades. "They've already found grown deer, they've found full sized bobcats inside them. It's just a matter of time before one gets the highly endangered Florida panther."

But biologists played down the risk to the panther, the most endangered species in the Everglades. There are believed to be only about 100 left, but they range over a territory of some 2 million acres.

"It would take some awfully unique circumstances for a python and a panther to meet up," said Darrell Land, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologist. "And the cats are very wary and they have very quick reaction times."

Pythons are not the only invader troubling the Everglades.

New fish and rodent species have also become pests, and two thriving colonies of the Nile monitor lizard, an Africa native that can grow to 7 feet in length, have established themselves on opposite sides of the state.

Nelson, a Democrat, said the Obama administration had committed $200 million, including $100 million of stimulus money, so far this year to Everglades restoration, a 35-year project valued at $8 billion when it was started nearly a decade ago.

The project is designed to restore natural water flow and native wildlife populations to the shallow, slow-moving river that dominates the interior of southern Florida.

(Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Mohammad Zargham)

I should start a pool on when the first kid or old person gets eaten. I mean, "They eat things we care about."?

The highlight of my night was my 90.3% win rating at Street Fighter IV tonight. I played around 20 matches. Yes!