Photo below submitted by Sheila. She writes:

"These snakes were amazing! Very long snakes being very sensual, writhing, coiling, gliding and twisting and rearing up. An extraordinarily beautiful sight. "

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Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.

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Unfortunately i am not the only person to see snakes around these parts. I see lots of live ones but also too many smashed ones. Almost all the killed ones are non-venomous like the beautiful copper-headed racer.

i do like snakes but from a respectful distance.

I think the big snakes doing the dance are rat snakes.

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Age. Fac ut gaudeam

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Age. Fac ut gaudeam

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Age. Fac ut gaudeam

Submitted by Dr John of CLAW (Charity of Lamma Animal Welfare), trying to counteract the fears with some facts.
This informative piece was written by "turtleconservationist" at the AAPN Yahoo Group::

There are few animals as feared and as hated as the snake. Many campers and summer tourists fear encountering snakes during the summer months. Others dread seeing them in their residential yards or gardens. Some people hate snakes so much that they will kill them on sight when they are encountered.

However, people truly have nothing to fear from these gentle and misunderstood animals. Snakes are very shy, timid, secretive, and generally docile creatures that try to avoid conflict when ever possible. Snakes will not make unprovoked attacks on people. When a person comes in contact with a snake, the snakes' first instinct will be to rapidly flee the area and find shelter. If the snake doesn't't do this, it may just stay perfectly still to try and blend in with the surroundings. If the snake is captured it may still not resort to biting; proof of its gentle demeanor. The snake has a number of other tactics it can resort to as an alternative to biting. The snake may hiss, make mock strikes with a closed mouth, or flail around.

Snakes bites on humans usually only happen when someone is severely agitating and harassing the snake either when cornering it or provoking it.
Almost 80% of snake bites on people happen when someone is trying to capture or kill the snake. All these facts show that snakes are not aggressive or evil animals. If you provoke and capture a wild animal, what can you expect except to be bitten since the animal is going to try and defend itself?

Looking a things perceptively, if you went and grabbed a 'cute and cuddly'
little squirrel off a tree it would certainly bite and scratch you. Snakes are no different. If you leave the snake alone it is almost impossible to be hurt by one!
The other percent of people bitten are those who may accidentally step on a snake in the wild. This too can be easily avoided if care is taking to be as aware as possible when hiking in natural areas and to carefully watch your step. Even if a person is bitten by the snake; in the case of non-venomous snakes the bite is nothing more then a few puncture wounds that rarely requires any more then a disinfectant. When a venomous snake bites a person there is a good chance that the snake didn't't even inject venom. Snakes have venom first and foremost to subdue there prey, since they don't have arms to hold on to it, a means of subduing prey is necessary. The venom also helps the snake digest its meal. When the venom is injected it helps to break the prey down for the snake since snakes don't chew there food, but swallow it whole. We are too big for snakes to eat so the snakes will not want to waste their venom on biting us. Even if the snake does inject venom, proper medical treatment and anti- venom can usually save the persons life.

Only about 0.2% of people bitten by snakes in United States die from the bite. Of this small number of deaths 90% are due to shock, not the actual bite. Similar stats apply to Australia which is home to over 60 kinds of potently venomous snakes. It is estimated to be even less in Europe. As said before, these bites could have easily been avoided. If you do encounter a snake just walk around it and leave it alone, it will not harm you in anyway. If you have a venomous snake living in your yard you can have it relocated by an animal control agency or local humane society. {the snake may leave} The snakes do not need to be needlessly killed! It is very easy to co-exist with these reptiles; snakes should also not be viewed as our enemies but our friends.

Snakes do many useful things for people. First off snakes are great controllers of rodents like rats and mice. Without snakes rodents and some insect populations would sky-rockets and these creatures would destroy crops, effecting our food industries and costing us millions of dollars.

Rodents also spread diseases which could seriously affect our health. Snakes are great at hunting rodents because they can crawl into small burrows and other areas that rodents use as shelters. These places are too small for other animals to get into. Secondly snakes are saving the lives of millions of people every year. Snake venom is being used in the medical field to treat all sorts of aliments like heart & stroke disease, cancer, Parkinson's, blood clots, and more. Heart and stroke disease alone kills around 16 million people every year. So snakes are helping to make medicine that could save millions.

Despite this countless snakes are brutally killed every year by people!
There are now over 60 species of snake listed on the World Conservation Union's Red List of Threatened Species.

We must look past our fear and ignorance and see snakes for what they really are, interesting creatures that play very important roles in the eco-system.
Snakes are also stunningly beautiful animals that come in an astounding array of gorgeous colors and exquisite patterns. A fear of snakes is inherent, so we must learn not to pass our irrational fears on to our children. It is an awful thing to live in fear. When we look past our fears we can then see the snake as a friend, not a fiend. I hope everyone that reads this will take the time to pass it along to others. Snakes have no voice in which to speak. This makes it important for those who do care to stand up and speak for those who can not do it for themselves! Let others know how the snake is our friend, not a fiend!

For information on How You Can Help Snakes please see:
Http://www.savethesnakes101.co.nr

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I have to show the beautiful side of snakes.

although snakes are solitary, when they come together they show a lot of innocent love towards each other. People should learn from these nature beauties.

one more



snakes rule!

Did you know many significant medicines nowadays were made from snake venom? probably you have used som already.

You have not heard of the extinction of any snakes yet because those species were too rare to be known by the general public. Not to talk about worldwide, only in HK and china there are a lot of critically endangered snakes. Some of them are rarer than wild pandas.

There are fellows anywhere on earth who hate snakes, no matter how many times they're told about the true facts about snakes.

The fact is that this problem is worse in the developing countries and low-educated communites.

If I hate someone at least I know him well then I would have a reason why I would have to hate him. but it's getting funny. Many fellows just hate snakes so so much.. but... they actually never encounter a real snake, let alone to handle one. Where's the fear come from? rumors. only the dark side's spread over for these poor legless buddies.

I have got many people who hated snakes to handle a snake in front of me. During the process, most of them naturally reduced their hate or fear towards snakes in as quick as a couple minutes. many turned out to be a snake lover now.

So what about snake soup lovers in HK? Are these snakes - all imported from the mainland, I believe? - endangered as well?

Lammadonna is just inviting all Lammaites to join a snake dinner next month, for a very low subsidised prize of $125. It'll include steamed and fried snake and other snake dishes, not just soup. I hear from Lamma-Por that they've already reserved 12 tables... It's promoted in Chinese only and no foreigners are usually present at these outings.

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nowadays you can't really see snakes being chopped live taking out their galls next to a public playground. people just swallowed the gall whole and blood was all over the ground. while most of the snakes were still awake for hours before death.

now most snake shops don't really have live snakes in their shops. They use frozen snake meat from mainland china. A couple famous snake shops still have live snakes in their shop. Those snakes are imported from malaysia or indonesia - which are more expensive than the chinese ones.

there are not many but a few endangered species included in the snake menu - but they are among the most expensive ones. If you go for only $125, I guess you are gonna eat some common ones like the indochinese ratsnakes many of you have seen on lamma, or water snakes, or other small potatos.

HK is much more decent. In china they still eat a lot of really wild ones

btw.. it's believed that snakes will heat your body up... well so.. if you're too hot already you'll have a problem