Venom ER is a neat show but I suspect it gives a very skewed view of snake bites because it selects the most dramatic cases that are the most interesting to watch. It is a bit like getting an idea of what being a police officer is like by watching one of those "world's wildest police chases" shows or getting an idea of what an average day field herping is like by watching Crocodile Hunter wrangle a few cobras and not see a single harmless snake. Venom ER doesn't show the boring cases where someones thumb swells up and he needs an aspirin because we as an audience aren't going to be that interested in the mundane cases. Likewise police shows don't show motorists pulling over and cooperating and Crocodile Hunter doesn't show us a day where he catches 4 ringneck snakes and nothing else. Boring doesn't sell on TV even though it is more common than the dramatic outside of TV. But I agree that Venom ER is a good show for getting a sense of what the more dangerous and dramatic effects of a rattlesnake bite can be.

I remember reading that book from cover to cover when I got it as a teenager after I had my wisdom teeth out. I was stuck in the house a couple of days and I have Klauber to keep me company. Great book, particularly the two volume original set if you can find it.

coonx, You know, I saw a fresh skin on the ground last week, not in the same area where Casper saw the snake, but maybe 100' away. It spooked me a little, but we had days in December, January and in February that were in the 70s and 80s so I knew it was possible snakes were coming out looking for a meal on a warm winter day----I just didn't want to believe they actually were. I hope your skin was from your resident rat snake. In the past, the earliest I have encountered a snake outdoors was either on March 1st or 2nd, likely in 2007 or 2008, and it was a pygmy rattler about 2" from my hand. I instinctively did a backwards somersault to get away from it since I already was crouched down low to the ground. I'm glad there were no eyewitnesses to that event. Bon, That's one of those things I try not to think about too long and too hard. Because I have so much trouble with timber rattlers coming out of the adjacent woodland, I am very cautious when handling mulch and compost year-round, always wearing heavy leather work gloves and using a rake to move mulch and compost around before I put my hands near it. Sometimes I'll stir up a skink or a glass lizard (which looks very much like a snake) which will startle me, but I rarely find a snake in the mulch. They more often are slithering through a raised bed looking for a meal, often preferring the dense shade beneath potato plants once the plants are a foot or two tall. Some years I mostly have trouble with copperheads, and with an occasional diamondback rattler. The last two or three or maybe four years, the persistent problem has been with timber rattlers. I keep reading they are rare. Ha, they may be rare in some places, but I encounter them almost weekly and sometimes several days a week in summer. The place I most often encounter them is right at my garden gate. They come out of our neighbors' woodland to our south, slither across maybe 20 yards of pasture, slide under the barbed wire fence, cross our driveway and meet up with me at the gate. It happens over and over and over again to the point that I start dreading that walk to the garden gate as I'm likely to encounter a venomous snake there. And, it isn't the same snake over and over because we shoot every venomous snake that we see around our house. They can room our 10 or 11 acres of woodland all they want and we leave them alone, but when they come to the yard or garden, it is too risky to ignore them. I feel really bad for this soldier that lost his leg. I cannot even imagine what he must be going through, but he is lucky to be alive. And, of course, it wasn't just luck---his hiking companions acted quickly to give him the best chance to survive. There are times I've been so close to snakes, including timber rattlers, that I don't know why I haven't been bitten, but I'm grateful I've been so fortunate to avoid that fate. I want to remember what happened to this gentleman so that I am more careful than ever, particularly in the garden. We always joke that it is a jungle out there in summer (and it is) but I am aware that snakes can be hard to spot in a jungle of vegetation. We also talk about how odd it is that I always see the timber rattlers just outside the garden gate or trying to slither through the fence, but rarely actually see them inside the garden. (One did climb up into one of my Luna hardy hibiscus plants last spring just a few feet inside the garden gate.) Do I think that we see and shoot them all before they get into the garden. No, I do not. What I think is likely is just they are easier to spot in the gravel driveway but once they are in the garden, I just don't see them, which is scary in and of itself.

I've begun my winter sowing. I50 natives mostly perennial 30 Asclepias and Asclepiad species and aproximately 20 or so annuals to be sown at a later date. I will write them all down at some point but not today. I'm also looking for seeds for Gaillardia aestivalis and G. pulchra. There hasn't been any activity since I joined the Wild Ones. I thought they were a more active bunch restoring habitats all around the place, but that's not the case. They are more focused on educating new members about native plants. HELLO!!! What would there be for me to do other than teach, and probably some of the long time members lol. I like the idea of volunteering at the nearby Midwine Tallgrass Prairie much better. I will be able to get to know the place and it's plants intimately, learn the relationships of plants in the field, grow natives from seed, and endangered natives. That's a passion and that disputed pipedream about Mead's milkweed is still looming over me. And maybe I can introduce some of my cool natives that they don't have out there.......ECSD!!!! YEAH