Snakes (Charleston: new home, college, camping)

[David Kennedy]

Retired Navy:

Please tell your lady that snakes are not sexually active now and the trick that works on dogs and cats (a bucket of cold water) has no effect on a snake.


Newtgirl...

Cut the head off and skin the snake. Rinse the gut cavity with salt water and soak in a salt water solution over night.
Wrap the meat in a clean dry cloth and put in the freezer for about 2 hours....when its stiff, cut into filets about 4" long and butterfly.
Can be dipped in egg and cornmeal and deep fried.
Baked like Cod Fish or just plain dipped in butter and fried like chicken and frog legs in a cast iron skillet...
Snake tastes a little like alligator with the texture of cat fish.

Snakes as food?

Those pythons in Asia always make their way to the table...bon apetite'

[Newtgirl]

Justin says "hell yeah". He's such a hillbilly. lol.

I don't know if I can bring myself to eat snakes. It would be kind of like eating my cat. Just too near and dear.

[Retired Navy]

Originally Posted by David Kennedy

Retired Navy:

Please tell your lady that snakes are not sexually active now and the trick that works on dogs and cats (a bucket of cold water) has no effect on a snake.

That's funny David...but I don't believe she thought the snake had a crush on our Mastiff . I told her if something similar happens again when I'm away just turn a trash can upside down over the critter and I'll remove it back to the woods when I get back.

[David Kennedy]

In the interest of propriety, I won't describe cat meat cuisine...in Asia, every plant, animal and many insects are used for food...the exception being humans used for food.

I remember a barbecue in the Philipines, roast dog was on the menu.
The Dog had been fed sugar cane chunks for a week or two....was killed, hair singed and scraped. Lathered in a butter mixture and roasted whole. Marinated from the inside out.

I didn't eat any of it myself...was thinking about our coonhounds and rabbit dogs back home.
Horse is another animal that I will not eat either.

In Hawaii I attended several luau's with friends. The greatest of these evening dinners took place at Wiamea Bay.
In the late afternoon, the family would take a fish net and circle the water for snapper...singing as they fished. There was always a bounty and it taught the little ones how their people had taken their food from the sea.
A pig was always pit roasted in Ti and Banana leaves and it was so ceremonial with torches and conch shells blowing...most of the men half drunk on beer and rice wine. A gracious Hospitality that I've never seen since.
They would sing songs and just enjoy life and each other. I miss that...and it was a gift to be accepted.
We miss a lot with our western ways...

I wrote this piece while awaiting the dinner hour.
It was brought to my attention by the cook that we have a great harvest of locust blossom on the trees and I should mention it.

Locust Blossoms: A delicacy for sure:

Pull the blossoms from the branches and rinse out any insects. The Indians made a type of fritter from them and I will describe our way of cooking them.


To 1 1/2 quarts of cleaned Locust blossoms, add 1/2 cup of flour, 1/4 cup of cornstarch, 2 eggs, 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda, 1 large pinch of salt.
Microwave cook 1/2 cup of onion and 1 tablespoon of butter and add to the mix.

Mix (stir)together and spoon out into your favorite hot oil (400*) and spread out to about 1/2" high...cook until crispy.

Simply delicious....red, green or hot peppers or cheese of choice give personality, if you desire.

[Two-Rivers]

BJC, it sure took me long enough, but here it is:

This snake was killed on Monongahela Power Co. right-of-way near Cairo, West Virginia.

The snake weighed 86 pounds. It measured 8 feet, 7 inches long and had 10 rattles. It was shot twice with a 357 magnum pistol by a man named Wilson.
The head was stored in the high school at Harrisville, WV. The skin was
donated to the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.

[BJC]

OMGosh that thing is HUGE!!! That man in the pic is very close to it. I am guessing it was dead by the time the pic was taken!

Thanks for taking the time to find it and post it here.

[Newtgirl]

We've found two timbers in the last week or so. Both of 'em probably weighed a good 20 lbs. One was certainly a gravid female, the other unknown.

I love snakes

[Threerun]

Funny but true story-

My dad was deathly afraid of snakes. He was the sort that would go out of his way- like crossing a 4 lane divided highway into oncoming traffic- to hit a snake on the road. Even if it was already dead. Didn't matter. Yeah- he was really that afraid of them!

He grew up in coastal swampland in southern NC and was apparently totally surprised once by a water moccison when he was a kid. I think from that day he swore an oath to rid the world of them. All of them.

When he moved back home in his later years I would often visit in the summer, and every now and again he would simply open the back door and let loose the 12 ga, blowing pieces of bark and limbs off a tree. He'd laugh and say "Damn vine snakes again"- he was shooting at vines he thought were snakes, lol. He would often mumble about these terrible little pygmy rattlers that infested the thick bush around his property, and how he wouldn't travel off the path for fear of hitting a nest of him.

Of course I thought all this was lunatic rantings- little miniature rattlesnakes, lol... I thought for sure he meant garter snakes or something like that.

So one afternoon I was helping to bush hog some of this dense growth on the backside of his property, and I hit this one patch of really, really thick stuff and all of suddent the ground came alive with dozens of these little black snakes.. I shut the tractor down and hopped off, thinking they were black snakes and WHOA!! Little god damned rattlers!

Frekin' things had big heads, slender bodies, and they were little rattlers! Not baby ones either.. Man I hoped back on that tractor and got the hell out of there, lol!

I went back in and I dared not tell Dad about those buggers, for fear he'd napalm the property with one of his acetelyn tanks and some diesel, lol.

Oh man that was something. Ironically that same summer my wife (girlfriend at the time) and I went to the National Zoo, and in the reptile house there on display were a bunch of little Pygmy Rattlers. I had never knew of their existence before that summer. Kinda cool little guys!

(PS- glad my Dad's fear of snakes never rubbed off on me- I quite like them!)

[David Kennedy]

When my Uncle lived in the Tampa suburbs he would take care of the pygmy rattlesnakes...at the edge of his driveway garage door, he had laid a length of 2" bull rope from a navy ship. The little snakes would side against it but never cross...each morning he would inspect the rope...kill the snakes and feed them to the gators in the drainage ditch in the lower back yard...

A friend near Virginia Beach had the largest rattler I ever saw...skin and rattles pinned to a board 13' 6" long and it stood diagonal in his gun room. Said it was a Cane-brake...he was mowing one evening with his tractor along the drainage ditches of his farm and saw his collie lying still along the bank. The snake had killed the dog and he saw it going for a culvert...the ford mowing machine took it's head off cleanly and he mounted the skin on the board.

Years ago, near Cool Springs at Rowlesburg, two right-of way inspectors came to the diner to have lunch and tell their tale...They were in the near-by mountains in their japanese pickup truck and stopped on a level spot...the front of the truck began to move...They looked at each other and got out to see...they were parked on a huge rattler and it was striking the tire...blew it out...they killed the snake with clubs and changed the tire...It was in the back cargo area and was over 10' long.

I was not surprised to see that rattlesnake of yours, Two Rivers...can you imagine the amount of snakes our pioneer fore-fathers had to contend with...snakes were part of the reason for hogs in this country...fat too dense for the fangs to penetrate and food on the ground...I'll bet that was very strong hog meat?

[Janipoo]

Originally Posted by David Kennedy

Retired Navy:


Newtgirl...

Cut the head off and skin the snake. Rinse the gut cavity with salt water and soak in a salt water solution over night.
Wrap the meat in a clean dry cloth and put in the freezer for about 2 hours....when its stiff, cut into filets about 4" long and butterfly.
Can be dipped in egg and cornmeal and deep fried.
Baked like Cod Fish or just plain dipped in butter and fried like chicken and frog legs in a cast iron skillet...
Snake tastes a little like alligator with the texture of cat fish.

Snakes as food?

Those pythons in Asia always make their way to the table...bon apetite'

That's gross