On a slightly different topic, once in my misspent youth taking people camping for a living the entire group of kids walked past a coiled copper head rocking it’s upper body back and forth and didn’t notice it. I was at the end of the line and did.
Another time we all stepped over a log that had fallen across the trail. For some reason I looked back and saw a coiled rattle snake under it. Again, no one was attacked.
When my kid was a kid there were a bunch of baby snakes in our yard - likely nearly newly hatched as they were about 6" long. My kid was in about 5th grade at the time and most of the kids in the neighborhoos were looking at a distance so I went over and picked one up and brought it over to the kids. They all ran. Then my kid decided to “show” all the boys in that group of kids and came back and cautiously had me give it to her to hold. That got her points with all those kids.
@Kyeh@Pony she is so BEAUTIFUL!!! I always wanted a snake as a kid. We used to hunt them in the woods near my house. I still don’t know how none of us made it out alive. We would catch copperheads annd cottonmouths and not even think twice about the fact that they were venemous. My mom did allow me to have a tarantula though. Her name was Hairy.
@sillyheathen That’s a cool Mom- my folks would never have let me have a tarantula when I was a kid. They let me have reptiles, cats, a dog, hamsters and fish, but tarantulas were too scary for them. (ahem, I have 16 of them now)
@kyeh That’s sad- he should get one! Then again, it’s a slippery slope- once you get one…
@Kyeh@Pony It’s so obvious she is female. Constrictors tails tell the whole story. And if you don’t like snakes or anatomy, it’s okay to tune out now
Past the cloaca (which in constrictors frequently has two spines) a female snake’s tail will taper quickly. Going from thick to skinny very quickly. The males tend to taper gradually. You can see it in the picture of Pony’s beautiful girl. It’s not science but it’s actually accurate about 95% of the time.
I wish I had a better picture of Eden. She was the same way
I remember when I was a teenager and working in the pet store, we had a big tank that we kept garter snakes in. A dozen or two snakes in there. They were all clumped together so I picked them up (maybe 12-15 snakes) to separate them and a lady walked in the store at the wrong moment. I had Eden around my neck and my hand looked like I just took Medusa’s head. Her eyes got as big as saucers, and she literally yelled, ‘Oh, fuck no!’ and left immediately
@Kyeh@Pony@sillyheathen I do like tarantulas too. But I couldn’t have Eden and Spike on my shoulders at the same time I was a weird teenager:) We also had a piranha named Leonard who was kind of a dick.
@werehatrack That is the 2014 Jake I posted a picture of. Mine actually has a cracked headtube and will be replaced with a 2020 frame. Just waiting on a few parts.
As for wheel size it is 700C (ISO 622). I am resisting an urge to rant about the stupidity of wheel size names.
@capnjb@kittykat9180
Yeah, I think many people don’t realize how long a snake can live when they make that initial purchase. It’s a long-term commitment.
@kittykat9180 Oh, yeah! Where else can you get bitten by an Egyptian sand Boa? I like snakes and was holding one and it bit me in the muscle between my thumb and my forefinger. And it didn’t release after the bite. You can’t pull away from a constrictor because their teeth point backwards. You have to let them let go or you risk tearing out their teeth or ripping your skin apart. So, I managed the bite for a minute or so, only a little blood, and the owner of shop had a bottle of schnapps in the freezer because snakes hate alcohol. A few drops on his head and he went back in his tank. Lesson learned for both of us.
And I tend to ramble, sorry for using all the words
@capnjb@kittykat9180
Had someone come into the ER one time with their snake latched onto their hand. My solutions was to put their hand underwater in a sink. Nice know about the alcohol though…
I think many people don’t realize how long a snake can live
Yeah, ball pythons can live 20+ years. I ended up giving Eden to a doctor who visited our shop frequently. I wasn’t going to sell her so I just gave him two requirements… 1) Keep the name Eden. and 2) Find her a better home if you can’t.
Of all the animals I have encountered in life, snakes have been the hardest one to overcome my intense fear/flight reaction. Took almost 60 years to not have a panic attack when one was near.
So any snake that is more than 10 yards away is my coolest these days.
I lived in Florida for a couple years and one time I was carrying a bundle of branches out to the street for yard waste pick up. A snake fell out of the bundle and landed at my feet.
It was a bit startling. So obviously I poked it with a stick for a bit, making it angry. And then I chopped its head off with a shovel.
@kittykat9180 When we lived in Tampa we had a rattlesnake in our garden and my wife shooed it away and then followed it. I was like WTF are you doing? Non-venomous = Good. Venomous = Not so good.
edit - Also one morning I went out to enjoy my coffee in the Lanai. And there was what I can only guess was an 8-10’ black snake in my chair. I decided to have my coffee inside that morning Florida has an entirely different ecosystem. When you live near a lake and actually recognize and name alligators… you’re not in Kansas any more
@capnjb I followed a snake at a golf course once when I went to the driving range with a friend and I got bored.
He said “most people run from those things.”
I used to take kids in jail canoeing across the state of Florida. We saw tons of snakes (and alligators and knee high fire ant homes). I’d go ashore before the kids and take my canoe paddle and beat all the bushes around and stomp my feet (to make the ground vibrate) to scare the snakes away. We had to be careful about water moccasins too (usually they took off as did the gaitors with the amount of disturbance we made getting out of canoes in the water and/or with kids slapping their canoe paddles in the water before they got out of the canoes).
Once I woke up early in the morning and saw a FL panther fishing off the end of one of our canoes (they rafted together) tied up to a tree and floating in the water. That was the coolest thing. I lay in the tent watching it hoping the kids kept sleeping so as to not scare it off. I as afraid the noise I’d make getting my camera out of my backpack would scare it away the only photo is the one in my mind.
Between that and the polar bear we saw when I worked in northern Canada (we were canoeing on the Albany river to the James Bay - which is on the Hudson’s bay) those are two of the coolest animals I saw (and yes I was scared of the polar bear, but not the panther, as polar bears are one of the only animals that view us as food) when doing that for a living.
@capnjb@kittykat9180 Tell me about it (fire ants). I missed there was a mid thigh fire ant hill on the other side of a big tree at the edge of where we were camping, sat on the ground, leaned against the tree and started to get bitten. I ran to the water - water moccasins and gaiters be damned - to get them off of me. We moved everything a bit further away from that nest.
My grandson, at about 8 or 9 at the time (he is now 11) was standing in the front yard pee’ing on an ant hill here. He was doing it as he wanted to see them run. Good thing they live at the end of a one and a half lane road so no one, outside of his siblings and me, saw that.
@capnjb@Kidsandliz
Kids, your life sounds interesting and terrifying.
I had an allergic reaction to fire ants when I lived in FL and didn’t realize I was standing in a small ant hill. My eyes and ears swelled up and my internal organs felt hella itchy. I got in the shower with straight hot water and that seemed to help with the itchy feeling. I also took an antihistamine. I was thankful I didn’t have serious anaphylaxis because I didn’t have health insurance at the time.
@capnjb@kittykat9180 I now have huge skin reactions to fire ants because I was bit so many times. In fact when I first moved to where I live now, I was a bit the night before I went to my new job - the first day at work. - and by the end of the day, my skin was hard and red and hot all the way from my ankle to mid thigh(cellulitis). I didn’t have the guts to be late to work the first day to have it checked out. I’m glad though my reaction is limited to that and not what you’ve got going on.
@Kidsandliz@kittykat9180 I’ve been there. Sometime in the 70’s we went to Miami for the Superbowl. Well, it was just my parents who went to the game, they left me and my sister at the motel Welcome to the 70’s! I think I was 5 or so and my sister was 8. We played in the parking lot of the motel and I remember my feet (I was barefoot) starting to burn like I was walking through hell. I looked at my feet and they were covered in red ants. It was awful, but lesson learned
Had a boa constrictor for awhile as a teenager. I was taking care of it for a family friend who was going to boot camp. Mom was cool about it and actually liked having it hang around when we had her friends over. She’d let it lay on her shoulders like it was a shawl! I just wasn’t happy about feeding it. Had to buy mice and put them in the aquarium with the snake so it could hunt it down for dinner. Years later my husband (now ex) brought home some alligator snapping turtles and some grass snakes he got from a friend that was a member of the herpetological society. He was ‘baby sitting them till the college class that needed them for research that coming fall could take them. I ended up taking care of them. I brought the a baby snake 6inches long to the pre school I worked at to show the kids. They were fascinated! Some asked if they could touch it. I was amazed that they wanted to! The teachers were more afraid than the kids 4-5yr olds. I think seeing them as tiny creatures help them not to be afraid.
Nate the Snake.
@yakkoTDI Kenny Stabler
@phendrick Is that the kid from South Park?
A dead one
@cengland0 Snakes aren’t ALL bad. Some of them are good to have around to keep pests under control. It’s not like we WANT to bite you.
@cengland0 @zhicks1987
We??? So what kind of snake are you?
On a slightly different topic, once in my misspent youth taking people camping for a living the entire group of kids walked past a coiled copper head rocking it’s upper body back and forth and didn’t notice it. I was at the end of the line and did.
Another time we all stepped over a log that had fallen across the trail. For some reason I looked back and saw a coiled rattle snake under it. Again, no one was attacked.
When my kid was a kid there were a bunch of baby snakes in our yard - likely nearly newly hatched as they were about 6" long. My kid was in about 5th grade at the time and most of the kids in the neighborhoos were looking at a distance so I went over and picked one up and brought it over to the kids. They all ran. Then my kid decided to “show” all the boys in that group of kids and came back and cautiously had me give it to her to hold. That got her points with all those kids.
Cottonmouth. Have you ever looked at one of those things??
@Tadlem43 Not only looked at one but ran one over with my mountain bike. I wasn’t trying to but he tried to slither away and crossed my path.
Arctic King cobra
My ex wife in a snow storm.
Can we vote for a lawyer?
There are too many really cool snakes for me to pick one that’s the coolest. My blue eyed leucistic ball python is high on my list, though.
@Pony That sounds EXTREMELY cool!
@Kyeh She’s gorgeous. This pic is old, she’s bigger now, but I’m too lazy to go take a new one.
@Pony She’s beautiful!!! Almost doesn’t look real! I love the way a snake feels - all that warm sinew under that satin skin.
@Kyeh Yass! They feel amazing!
@Kyeh @Pony she is so BEAUTIFUL!!! I always wanted a snake as a kid. We used to hunt them in the woods near my house. I still don’t know how none of us made it out alive. We would catch copperheads annd cottonmouths and not even think twice about the fact that they were venemous. My mom did allow me to have a tarantula though. Her name was Hairy.
@Pony @sillyheathen
You mean … you’re a ghost?!?
My brother always wanted to have a pet snake, but he’s never had one even as an adult.
@sillyheathen That’s a cool Mom- my folks would never have let me have a tarantula when I was a kid. They let me have reptiles, cats, a dog, hamsters and fish, but tarantulas were too scary for them. (ahem, I have 16 of them now)
@kyeh That’s sad- he should get one! Then again, it’s a slippery slope- once you get one…
@Pony @sillyheathen He has a cat now, so I guess he’s happy with her.
@Kyeh @Pony Oh, I love her! So beautiful!
@Kyeh @Pony It’s so obvious she is female. Constrictors tails tell the whole story. And if you don’t like snakes or anatomy, it’s okay to tune out now
Past the cloaca (which in constrictors frequently has two spines) a female snake’s tail will taper quickly. Going from thick to skinny very quickly. The males tend to taper gradually. You can see it in the picture of Pony’s beautiful girl. It’s not science but it’s actually accurate about 95% of the time.
I wish I had a better picture of Eden. She was the same way
I remember when I was a teenager and working in the pet store, we had a big tank that we kept garter snakes in. A dozen or two snakes in there. They were all clumped together so I picked them up (maybe 12-15 snakes) to separate them and a lady walked in the store at the wrong moment. I had Eden around my neck and my hand looked like I just took Medusa’s head. Her eyes got as big as saucers, and she literally yelled, ‘Oh, fuck no!’ and left immediately
@Kyeh @Pony @sillyheathen I do like tarantulas too. But I couldn’t have Eden and Spike on my shoulders at the same time
I was a weird teenager:) We also had a piranha named Leonard who was kind of a dick.
@Kyeh @Pony
Yes
They look cold and rough, but they are actually warm and smooth. I miss Eden around my neck. She was such a good girl.
Jörmungandr
Cobra
Ball python
Then again there’s Jake The Snake Roberts:
@tweezak Can you tell me which drugs he said no to?
@tweezak I prefer his later career.
@yakkoTDI Podcaster?
@tweezak Bicycle.
https://99spokes.com/bikes/kona/2014/jake-the-snake
@tweezak @yakkoTDI not a bad Road bike. Not good for trails!
@yakkoTDI Ah, yes. I remember now. Sorry, once I got my Orbea I promised to stop ogling other bikes.
@mycya4me Not a great road bike either as it is a cyclocross bike.
I do take it on trails but just not the really hard trails.
@tweezak I always keep ogling.
@yakkoTDI 650C?
@werehatrack That is the 2014 Jake I posted a picture of. Mine actually has a cracked headtube and will be replaced with a 2020 frame. Just waiting on a few parts.
As for wheel size it is 700C (ISO 622). I am resisting an urge to rant about the stupidity of wheel size names.
Coral and King snakes. Can you tell the difference?
@hchavers Red meet yellow…
@hchavers What if you put them together:
/youtube I FEEL THE EARTH MOVE
I was under the impression that snakes generally dislike the cold.
Coolest Snake is a Cold Dead one.
@Mandamm I’m in 1000000% agreements with that! Yep, the best snake is a long Dead one! Food for the Birds
Somehow I can’t believe that pants snake didn’t come up.
@2many2no I was gonna say trouser snake but I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate. But this is meh.
@2many2no @kittykat9180
ISWYDT
/giphy snickering
@2many2no or toilet/drain snakes
I had a ball python named Eden for a long while. I was also young once.
Vintage Pepsi can for scale. 
@capnjb did you work at pet store?
@capnjb @kittykat9180
Yeah, I think many people don’t realize how long a snake can live when they make that initial purchase. It’s a long-term commitment.
@kittykat9180 Oh, yeah! Where else can you get bitten by an Egyptian sand Boa?
I like snakes and was holding one and it bit me in the muscle between my thumb and my forefinger. And it didn’t release after the bite. You can’t pull away from a constrictor because their teeth point backwards. You have to let them let go or you risk tearing out their teeth or ripping your skin apart. So, I managed the bite for a minute or so, only a little blood, and the owner of shop had a bottle of schnapps in the freezer because snakes hate alcohol. A few drops on his head and he went back in his tank. Lesson learned for both of us.
And I tend to ramble, sorry for using all the words
@capnjb @kittykat9180
Had someone come into the ER one time with their snake latched onto their hand. My solutions was to put their hand underwater in a sink. Nice know about the alcohol though…
@chienfou @kittykat9180
/giphy Themoreyouknow
@chienfou @kittykat9180
Yeah, ball pythons can live 20+ years. I ended up giving Eden to a doctor who visited our shop frequently. I wasn’t going to sell her so I just gave him two requirements… 1) Keep the name Eden. and 2) Find her a better home if you can’t.
Of all the animals I have encountered in life, snakes have been the hardest one to overcome my intense fear/flight reaction. Took almost 60 years to not have a panic attack when one was near.
So any snake that is more than 10 yards away is my coolest these days.
Vipers are very cool
Literally… Snow snake (aka ice snake)
@chienfou The snake @Pony has sounds like it might have inspired that:
I lived in Florida for a couple years and one time I was carrying a bundle of branches out to the street for yard waste pick up. A snake fell out of the bundle and landed at my feet.
It was a bit startling. So obviously I poked it with a stick for a bit, making it angry. And then I chopped its head off with a shovel.
@kittykat9180 When we lived in Tampa we had a rattlesnake in our garden and my wife shooed it away and then followed it. I was like WTF are you doing? Non-venomous = Good. Venomous = Not so good.
edit - Also one morning I went out to enjoy my coffee in the Lanai. And there was what I can only guess was an 8-10’ black snake in my chair. I decided to have my coffee inside that morning
Florida has an entirely different ecosystem. 
When you live near a lake and actually recognize and name alligators… you’re not in Kansas any more 
@capnjb I followed a snake at a golf course once when I went to the driving range with a friend and I got bored.
He said “most people run from those things.”
@capnjb @kittykat9180
I used to take kids in jail canoeing across the state of Florida. We saw tons of snakes (and alligators and knee high fire ant homes). I’d go ashore before the kids and take my canoe paddle and beat all the bushes around and stomp my feet (to make the ground vibrate) to scare the snakes away. We had to be careful about water moccasins too (usually they took off as did the gaitors with the amount of disturbance we made getting out of canoes in the water and/or with kids slapping their canoe paddles in the water before they got out of the canoes).
Once I woke up early in the morning and saw a FL panther fishing off the end of one of our canoes (they rafted together) tied up to a tree and floating in the water. That was the coolest thing. I lay in the tent watching it hoping the kids kept sleeping so as to not scare it off. I as afraid the noise I’d make getting my camera out of my backpack would scare it away the only photo is the one in my mind.
Between that and the polar bear we saw when I worked in northern Canada (we were canoeing on the Albany river to the James Bay - which is on the Hudson’s bay) those are two of the coolest animals I saw (and yes I was scared of the polar bear, but not the panther, as polar bears are one of the only animals that view us as food) when doing that for a living.
@Kidsandliz @kittykat9180 I love that so much
And fire ants are NO JOKE!
@capnjb @kittykat9180 Tell me about it (fire ants). I missed there was a mid thigh fire ant hill on the other side of a big tree at the edge of where we were camping, sat on the ground, leaned against the tree and started to get bitten. I ran to the water - water moccasins and gaiters be damned - to get them off of me. We moved everything a bit further away from that nest.
My grandson, at about 8 or 9 at the time (he is now 11) was standing in the front yard pee’ing on an ant hill here. He was doing it as he wanted to see them run. Good thing they live at the end of a one and a half lane road so no one, outside of his siblings and me, saw that.
@capnjb @Kidsandliz
Kids, your life sounds interesting and terrifying.
I had an allergic reaction to fire ants when I lived in FL and didn’t realize I was standing in a small ant hill. My eyes and ears swelled up and my internal organs felt hella itchy. I got in the shower with straight hot water and that seemed to help with the itchy feeling. I also took an antihistamine. I was thankful I didn’t have serious anaphylaxis because I didn’t have health insurance at the time.
@capnjb @kittykat9180 I now have huge skin reactions to fire ants because I was bit so many times. In fact when I first moved to where I live now, I was a bit the night before I went to my new job - the first day at work. - and by the end of the day, my skin was hard and red and hot all the way from my ankle to mid thigh(cellulitis). I didn’t have the guts to be late to work the first day to have it checked out. I’m glad though my reaction is limited to that and not what you’ve got going on.
@Kidsandliz @kittykat9180 I’ve been there.
Sometime in the 70’s we went to Miami for the Superbowl. Well, it was just my parents who went to the game, they left me and my sister at the motel 
Welcome to the 70’s! 
I think I was 5 or so and my sister was 8. We played in the parking lot of the motel and I remember my feet (I was barefoot) starting to burn like I was walking through hell. I looked at my feet and they were covered in red ants. It was awful, but lesson learned 
I can’t pick a favorite!
Yes, coral snake!!
/showme Snake Plissken
@therealjrn Here’s the image you requested for “Snake Plissken”
No snakes. Absolutely not. It’s unnatural. Only animal on land without legs.
@BergyD do you prefer a grizzly bear?
@kittykat9180 That’s a silly question. I am a woman. I will always pick the bear.
Monty Python
/giphy snake-simpsons
Had a boa constrictor for awhile as a teenager. I was taking care of it for a family friend who was going to boot camp. Mom was cool about it and actually liked having it hang around when we had her friends over. She’d let it lay on her shoulders like it was a shawl! I just wasn’t happy about feeding it. Had to buy mice and put them in the aquarium with the snake so it could hunt it down for dinner. Years later my husband (now ex) brought home some alligator snapping turtles and some grass snakes he got from a friend that was a member of the herpetological society. He was ‘baby sitting them till the college class that needed them for research that coming fall could take them. I ended up taking care of them. I brought the a baby snake 6inches long to the pre school I worked at to show the kids. They were fascinated! Some asked if they could touch it. I was amazed that they wanted to! The teachers were more afraid than the kids 4-5yr olds. I think seeing them as tiny creatures help them not to be afraid.
I see a few have been posted already, but I prefer this Whitesnake!!
@MrGoodGuy For what it is worth, I saw Great White open for White Snake. It was the Great White Snake concert! The 80’s were kind of f’ing cool
I fucking hate snakes
@Star2236 You are so lucky I didn’t get your name in the exchange
Coffee and snakes. That would have been a fun box 
@capnjb
I would have been screaming out of fear and probably thrown the box away
Thank god
@Star2236
Milk snake. AKA not the Coral Snake.
Lack of Cobra on this list is weird and the prevalence of invasive pythons back home make me dislike them.