re: Snake Stories: Too Close for Comfort Edition

No such thing as too close for me, but here’s my best snake-catching story.
A friend and I were snake hunting on a levee, and there was a black-masked racer curled up on a tree that was jutting out horizontally from the levee. Couldn’t reach him in any way, so I jokingly told my friend to get the snake hook under it, fling it in the air, and I’d catch it. So he gets the hook under it, flings it in the air, and I catch it in a perfect loop -having both its head and tail in the same hand. If I hadn’t caught it by the head it would have bitten the crap out me - they are nippy sumbitches. Couldn’t make that perfect catch again if I tried 100 times. And I wouldn’t believe that story if someone else told me, but it is 100% true. We laughed our asses off afterwards.

ETA: I take that back - there was one incident that was too close for comfort for me. When I was around 13 I was riding my bike on a gravel road in Lacombe and saw a snake crossing the road. From the first glimpse I got at the pattern, it looked like a hognose, which is one of my dream catches I still have yet to make. I hopped off my bike, ran over to the moving snake and got my hand over him for the grab. Suddenly he stopped, and I saw the orange stripe down his back. It was a pygmy rattler. I was literally a fraction of a second away from making the grab if he hadn’t stopped. Would have been bitten for sure.