Ever find a snake in a hay bale?

ChuckS1 · Mar 23, 2015

Sticking with square bales from now on... EDIT: just for the record, this isn't my picture. Looks like a python, so maybe a Florida member can verify. At any rate, a lot bigger than any garter snake I ever found in a square bale. My wife says it's about the size of the copperhead she found on the driveway last fall, though.

Alpo · Mar 23, 2015

Nope, but back in the summer of '73 my Boy Scout Troop hiked to Summer Camp. We all got Hiking Merit Badge, plus the 50-Miler Award (yaaaay us).

One day we've stopped for lunch, and after eating but before starting off again, the boys were all jumping in this big pile of pinecones. They did this for ten minutes or so. Then they picked up their packs and started off, and me and the Scoutmaster was packing up the food and stuff back in the van, and this pygmy rattler, maybe 15 inches long, came crawling out of the pinecone pile.

BrianE · Mar 23, 2015

That's a BIG snake!

arjay · Mar 23, 2015

Nope,but I got bit by a black widow who was in my shoe last Friday [emoji32]

Pbchucker · Mar 23, 2015

I did find a snake in a square hay bale. But it was just a foot or two long and not bigger than an inch around. Nothing near as big as the one in your picture! Where was this?

rwsmith · Mar 23, 2015

Is that......

Is that a big timber rattler??? How long was it?

rwsmith · Mar 23, 2015

The snake was probably thinking.....

Alpo said:
Nope, but back in the summer of '73 my Boy Scout Troop hiked to Summer Camp. We all got Hiking Merit Badge, plus the 50-Miler Award (yaaaay us).

One day we've stopped for lunch, and after eating but before starting off again, the boys were all jumping in this big pile of pinecones. They did this for ten minutes or so. Then they picked up their packs and started off, and me and the Scoutmaster was packing up the food and stuff back in the van, and this pygmy rattler, maybe 15 inches long, came crawling out of the pinecone pile.

"Whew, that's the last place I thought I run into Boy Scouts."

Kernel Crittenden · Mar 23, 2015

I've seen lots of snakes in hay bails. Square and round. But they were always something small, like garter snakes.

Philadelphia Patriot · Mar 23, 2015

Indiana Jones sums it up for me...

mstem · Mar 23, 2015

Just black snakes, nothing like that one!

carpriver · Mar 23, 2015

When working on the farm when baling hay we would find snake in the bale, crawling out of the bale or when braking a bale apart to feed the animals finding the bones and skin of snakes. IF I had seen the one pictured here I would have quite my job or carried a big big big canon.

have I ever told you people I hate and am afraid of snakes.

tomtheturner · Mar 23, 2015

When I was a kid I worked for a custom baler in the summer time. I worked on the wagon behind the baler, and caught the bales as they came out of the baler. Then stacked them on the wagon. Many a time one of those bales came up the chute with a snake stuck under the binder twine. They weren't always little ones either. Thank fully none as large as in the picture though.

galena · Mar 23, 2015

I paid for part of my college by piling bales at $8.00 a day, later got a nickel a bale. I never found a snake in a bale but there were a few places where we would use our hay hooks to pull the bale over very carefully so that we could see what was under it while keeping both feet on the safe side of the bale before picking it up. Many times we would find rattlers under the bale, but none were ever as big as that son of a gun in the OP's picture........dang, if I found one like that I would have been standing on top of the load screaming like a little girl.

mikey460sw · Mar 23, 2015

What kind of snake is that????????????
That thing is HUGE!!!!!!!!!'

Drm50 · Mar 23, 2015

Snakes

I have had snakes go right over my shoulder when slinging bales
onto the wagon. Usually black snakes. The funniest snake story
I have happened at night while seining soft- craws out of a local
creek. Me and my brother where running a 8' seine, my brother
in law was the bucket man. Me and brother would raise up net
and BroLaw would put craws in bucket. We raised up seine and
a big water snake came right over top of net and into Dick's hip
boot. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but Boot- scooting
boogie does not cover it. We finally knocked him down when we
caught up with him,about 2 mile downstream, and pulled his
boot off. The snake had bailed out before we got Dick stopped.

da gimp · Mar 23, 2015

back in the late 1967-68-69, we hauled hay for a penny and a half per bale... if we were lucky enough to haul a 1000 65 lb. to 80 lb. square bales we made about $15.00 that day, and thought we were getting rich......about 10 hours of loading them on a truck, then taking them to barns & stacking them very tightly in the hay lofts......hay shrinks quite a bit as it cures/drying out. On one farm near Gilliam , Mo., the Storts-Kiso farm, we could count on seeing 3 or 4 rattlesnakes per day hauling for them.........about 5' was the longest I can remember................

On that farm, we never hauled the hay the day Mr. Kiso baled it........there was just too big a chance that a snake would be in one or several bales.....injured but still capable of biting a person... we got so we kicked each bale over before we'd pick it up too.

rwsmith · Mar 23, 2015

Can you bail....

Kernel Crittenden said:
I've seen lots of snakes in hay bails. Square and round. But they were always something small, like garter snakes.

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

Kinman · Mar 23, 2015

Not all bailed up like that but snakes in the stacks was always something to be careful of, something to do with the internal heat of the stacked bales, snakes like to get in there and hang out, nice and warmed up when you uncover them.

zzzippper · Mar 23, 2015

No, but I've found a needle in a haystack.

jlrhiner · Mar 23, 2015

Once when I was young and excitable, I was practicing with my bow using stacked hay bales for a back stop. Retrieving an arrow, I noticed blood running between my fingers. Big ole black snake coiled up in it, the arrow went through him like seven times.

Ever find a snake in a hay bale?

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