We had a lovely, utterly poisonous coral snake (“Red on yellow kill a fellow…”) on our front porch this evening! I’ve grown accustomed to the four ‘gators in the pond next to our house, and they don’t bother me too much (they’re small–three to four feet long–but one has grown unafraid of people, which is scary), but the coral snake took me aback. I don’t really like the notion of a pretty, poisonous snake hanging out near my front door where my two-year-old might try to grab it.
Nonetheless, I let it crawl away and didn’t try to kill it. I decided about five minutes later that perhaps I should try to capture it and move it somewhere else, but it had been moving and was nowhere to be found by then.
6 Responses to “Ssssnake!”
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I'm a freelance copyeditor specializing in fantasy and science fiction. SF/F novels I have copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Endeavour, Golden Spur, John W. Campbell Memorial, Quill, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. In 2007 I became the first and only copyeditor ever short-listed for a World Fantasy Award.
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scary.
Wow, that is creepy.
From a quick internet search:
Coral snakes tend to be relatively shy creatures, and bites are uncommon. Coral snakes account for fewer than 1% of venomous snakebites in the United States. Most people bitten by coral snakes are handling them intentionally.
And there is antivenom available. Sounds like you did the right thing. Still, with a small child…maybe you want to figure out what needs to happen in the unlikely case that a snake does bite, so you’ll have the drill down.
Yeah, I worry a bit that I might not know he’d been bitten, since he doesn’t talk that much yet; my searches say the bite sometimes looks like no more than a scratch, and that symptoms of the neurotoxin might not show up till twelve hours later. :-/
It’s probably an unrealistic worry at this point. If I start seeing the snake regularly I’ll have to relocate it, though.
Yike. Don’t you relocate it, fercryinoutloud! The snake doesn’t bite unless you mess with it! Call the snake disposal people.
Surely you’ve got snake disposal people in Florida?
You’re probably right. They must have one somewhere….