Ever find a snake in a hay bale?

friends owned land on US65 highway, south of Marshall, Mo. that the south boundary was the Blackwater River. They had one old railroad boxcar that was in one fenced in field with a pond that was used to keep bales in so that it was easy to feed out of in winter.

On our 2nd load that day, the old farmer came by & told us he'd spotted & killed a rattlesnake in the boxcar right after we'd left from putting the first load in........One of the guys lived nearby, & we went to his home & retrieved a 20 ga pump & a pistol in case we ran into any more snakes that day.

If you ever smell cucumbers in the woods, a field or farm building, you'd best keep your eyes peeled for copperheads........... a poisonous snake. To the best of my knowledge, no one has died from a copperhead bite in Missouri, unless they had a severe/bad medical condition already...but you can get dern sick from it..........but generally, if you give them or a rattlesnake a chance, they'll leave you alone & try to get away...... a cottonmouth or water moccasin has a nasty, vile aggressive disposition... & they'll actively chase you on land or if you're in a boat.... they don't fear anything............

da gimp said:

If you ever smell cucumbers in the woods, a field or farm building, you'd best keep your eyes peeled for copperheads........... a poisonous snake. To the best of my knowledge, no one has died from a copperhead bite in Missouri, unless they had a severe/bad medical condition already...but you can get dern sick from it..........but generally, if you give them or a rattlesnake a chance, they'll leave you alone & try to get away...... a cottonmouth or water moccasin has a nasty, vile aggressive disposition... & they'll actively chase you on land or if you're in a boat.... they don't fear anything............

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Absolute facts right there.
I was born & raised in St. Louis, but spent every summer from ages 8-16 working the hay fields on my Grandfather's farm in SE Missouri. I've only seen one or two small rattlers in the feilds (nothing like the one in the photo) but I've seen a TON of copperheads in and under haybales. A cousin of mine got bit by one and spent a couple of weeks in the hospital and darned near lost his leg.
Water moccasins/cottonmouths are common in the creeks around there, and you want to give them a wide berth. If they feel the slightest bit threatened they WILL come after you - and they are scary fast...

One summer I dispatched a bunch of cotton mouth snakes. they were living real close to where folks fished and kids played on a sandbar. 2 of them were within 4 or 5 feet of my kids. Big bodied and for a pit viper they are evil looking. Like Robert Roark said of Cape Buffalo, they look at you like you owe them money.

I never had one try to get in the boat but have had copperheads try. A boat paddle can give a snake a painful lesson. Actually if one hits them just right after their last wiggle they line up for their 80 vergeens.

ChuckS1 said:

Sticking with square bales from now on...

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Damn! what is that?? I never have, but in my younger days I have discovered a couple gals in a hayloft

Got fairly close to this old boy, I'd say 4' long-- hiker came by and he went on his way-- I smelled a musky smell which I read later they give off when upset-- the fool hiker was poking a stick at him-

Is that a Burmese python in the bale? Was it in Florida?

I saw a pic of a big Rock python in South Africa that'd gotten fried in an electric fence. Saw another here that'd constricted a large German Shepherd. They often have bad tempers.

one thing about snakes when i see them there always close and unexpected they make me jump 10 feet

Data in the pic says from Austrailia.

While living in the wilds of Oklahoma,came home from work,note on the door "your suppers in the oven,please get the snake out of the dresser drawer". 3 foot bull snake,completely deaf from the wife's screaming.We went for a long walk,he never came back.

Me and a buddy pull up at a local lake a few years ago and see two guys standing soaking wet on the bank and their jon boat floating out in the lake. Come to find out they discovered a snake(they said it was a rattler) under some of their fishing gear in the boat and decided to ditch the boat and swim back to shore.

OMG! Not one that big!

snake story

Since we're telling snake stories, here's one that happened to my now elderly neighbor.
Back in the day Glenn and Barb loved riding their Harley, particularly with another couple. One summer evening around dusk they were riding two abreast with the friends just ahead, going about 20-25mph. Snakes like to stretch out on the road to adjust their body temp, and, you guessed it. The lead bike hit that stretched out black snake and both ends wrapped around exhaust pipes and the woman passenger's bare legs. To hear Glenn tell the story, the screaming didn't stop for a long time. She had a fear of snakes both before and after that incident!

ChuckS1 said:

Sticking with square bales from now on...

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yeah, but not quit that big!!!!

just a hay viper guarding it's egg.

I'm sure glad there are almost no snakes around here. I grew up baling hay and wouldn't have wanted to if I had to experience what some of you guys have.

Andy



P.S. I wonder how all the snakes mentioned here got through the baler without being sliced up by the plunger knife??

rwsmith said:

Can you bail snakes for their skins and sell the hay you get on the side?

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A bale of snakes ....... you know, that thought has to be a prime ingredient of the nightmare from hell!

You guys are lucky.

The only creature I've ever found in a round container was a pig in a poke.

I've had plenty of snakes in bales but the absolute worst was when the farmer I was working for got a skunk in a bale. My mom was convinced I had a green aura about me for a week no matter how hard I scrubbed.

J. R. WEEMS said:

Damn! what is that?? I never have, but in my younger days I have discovered a couple gals in a hayloft

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HMMM, and just what were they doing there?

I never found a snake in a bale of hay but I did get one out of a bundle of sugar cane. Several times to make extra money I have gone down South a couple of hours to the Michoacan border and run a pickled cucumber collection plant for a couple of months a year. The pay is astounding for down here and all you need is to be able to speak good Spanish, good English and have a sense of adventure. That area is now somewhat contested still as a hold-over from the Drug War so I have not gone lately.

The town I worked in was Huanimaro, pronounced Wha-KNEE-Ma-row and it was just a little "For a Few Dollars More" type pueblo of about 5,000 people or less but was centrally located to collect the small cucumber harvests from all the farms in that area. Situated in a low valley surrounded by extinct volcanoes it has a near beach-type climate ideal for growing pickles -- although it's far from any beach. But it's not 6,500 feet up like San Miguel either. It's hot there.

Pickle collection is an all-day thing during the season, often running until 1:00 or 2:00 A.M. and starting again next morning. Seven days a week. About two months of solid work. The pay is great. Just the "per diem" daily stippend is more than I normally make out of my Ice Cream Store and I just banked the wages. Everytime I see a Vlasic pickle or Mount Olive pickle jar in a store I have fond memories of the pickle harvests. I actually taught my 40+ person staff to snap their heels together and give me the palm up salute of the Wehrmact and to address me as "Mein Herr" whenever management-types from either company flew in for inspections which was something that happened every couple of weeks. Keeping a straight face was tough sometimes but whenever I see the guys that run the pickle operations down here we always get a chuckle out of the reports filtering back from the U.S. inspectors that something was "not quite right" over in Cal's pickle plant.

The pickle reception points were huge open-ended sheds that held the pickle sorting machines and stacks of pallets and weigh-scales with large bundles of different types of plastic mesh bags for different sizes or grades of pickles as well as an area where Semi-tractor-trailer trucks could load or unload. We always loaded the pallets of pickles onto freezer trucks using a fork lift, but sugar-cane bundles often were delivered and stored in one corner of the shed for some type of production plant next door. When they came over for the sugar cane, several guys would come in with machetes and hack open a bundle and each would carry an armload over-the-shoulder back to the other plant. This happened several times a day and I paid no attention to it.

One night, about 10:00 P.M. as we operated under less than ideal ceiling lighting a bundle got hacked open and out came a rather thin, long snake moving at warp speed across the cement floor. People -- mostly MY employees as well as the guy who hacked open the bundle -- were leaping away or running away in pretty much genuine panic. The snake was moving more or less in my direction and the room was clearing fast as people either fled out the shed's open end or jumped up onto the pickle sorting machines.

I heard someone yell that it was a "Fer de Lance", a particularly deadly type of pit viper that probably came up from the Yucatan or Gulf Coast after slithering into the bundle of sugar cane they had just wacked open. I did not feel any particular danger as the snake slithered towards me because I felt there was plenty of time to jump out of the way if need be, however one of the young guys on the crew grabbed a grain-shovel off the wall and smacked the snake deader than Hemmingway.

People calmed down immediately, but then the kid that wacked the snake picked it up by the tail and starting walking through the pickle shed like a triumphant gladiator -- scaring the bejesus out of our female staff and I don't like snakes much myself -- so I had to put a stop to that with the old "Schtalker! Zis iss Kaos. Ve don't do ZAT here!" I told him to take it outside and cut it in half and bury it. What if it was only playing possum? I don't know much about snakes except that I don't like them.

Anyway, that's my snake story.