Big Snake, Dead Snake, Heavy Snake, Fake Snake
Category: Science, Nature & Medicine...
Posted Thursday, November 17, 2005 at 06:27 PM [GMT-6]

Very few Gazette posts have generated traffic like this one showing the photo of the big rattlesnake purportedly killed near Fritch, Texas. I've even received email asking for the source of the photo so it could be verified. Unfortunately, I have no idea about who took the photo; it came to me via one of those endlessly forwarded emails that 99% of the time get trashed without a second glance.

Fortunately for those naysayers whose lives are such that they've got the time to perform the necessary trigonometric computations on the photo to prove that the snake can't possibly be as big as it looks, Snopes is on the case. I'm sure that -- just like a real dead rattlesnake -- this story still has a little bite left in it.

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Comments

I do not like snakes, Sam I am.

Heh...love the technorati tag line. :-)

Posted by: Gwynne at November 17, 2005 07:29 PM

Veggie Tales AND Dr. Seuss...you're a well-read woman! ;-)

I wondered if anyone would get that post title, clumsy as it was.

Posted by: Eric at November 17, 2005 07:49 PM

One thing bothered me about that pic: The guy's hands on the stick and lack of counterbalancing posture don't indicate 90+ pounds of snake.

Can you imagine tying a string to the end of that stick and lifting an 80 pound sack of Sacrete? I think it would look different.

Posted by: Natalie at November 20, 2005 01:46 PM

Natalie, that is the point that all the skeptics are jumping on, and I can't argue against the logic. In fact, photo or not, I wonder if 97# is logical for even a 9' rattlesnake. Rattlers are not that thick -- not like an anaconda or a python, for example -- and a hundred pound sack of anything is heavy enough to make you wonder how much a nine-footer would really weigh.

OTOH, I've never even seen a six footer in real life, much less picked one up, so I have nothing but guesses.

Posted by: Eric at November 20, 2005 02:09 PM
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