the Unique spider tailed horned viper

Sounds like kraits. Nasty buggers, and some varieties live in the sea, so the water ain't even safe!

In Central America they had a bitty little snake that we always called a "vine snake" because it was green and looked like a vine until it moved. Nasty little thin guy with a lozenge-shaped head, and a huge one would be maybe 3 feet long, most being a foot and a half or so - not very intimidating... until one bit someone. It just wasn't even safe to grab a vine if you slipped in the mud! Had something called a "bushmaster" too, which got up to maybe 10 feet long, and looked dangerous as hell, all fat and viper-ish. They WERE dangerous, too, if they bit you - but they'd usually run away on contact if they could, so it was best practice to let 'em.

Here it's just rattle snakes and copper heads, with an occasional cotton mouth. I was told last week that it's illegal to kill rattle snakes here, but my take is that it's illegal for one to cross my trail. Out in the wild the only "law" is what you enforce yourself - rattle snakes can't read. Therefore I'll kill 'em when I can, and eat the evidence before any legal beagles get wind of it.

I'll never forget the time when my son was about 2 years old, and we lived in North Carolina. I hadn't even seen a copper head in years of living there, and was teaching him about the woods HERE for any possible moves that might lie in the future. So I took him down in the woods and was carrying him in my arms, and explaining stuff as we went along. I recall distinctly stepping over a log and commenting that when you do that, you need to check on the other side of the log to make sure you ain't going to step on a copperhead hiding in the dead leaves, and made him look, too, from way up there in my arms, as practice and to drive the point home. We ran all over those woods instructing in this and that, and finally got ran out by the mosquitoes - but never, EVER saw a copper head the whole time we were in 'em. Like I said, I hadn't seen one in years of being there.

That self-same day, after we left the woods, we walked up through the yard and started into the house, and there, plain as day and big as life, was a blasted copper head coiled up to sun itself on the middle step of three leading up to the door. He was just DARING me to try to get into my own house, which I took exception to.

My boy thought it was great - he wanted to play with it. I guess maybe that lesson hadn't taken yet.

Because of that, I couldn't set him down, either. So I carried him down to the shed and got a mattock out of it and went back to fight the copper head one-armed, because the other arm was occupied holding my boy up and keeping him from going to play with the pretty snake. I killed it with the mattock, but that son of a gun tried his danmdest to eat me alive.

I guess I showed him who was boss and master of the house!

There is a video making the rounds of YouTube now of a little boy about that same age playing with a snake in a swimming pool. I commented there to my son's wife, who is carrying THEIR first son now, that she needs to make my son check pockets in the laundry after the grandson is born before she washes it... just in case it's genetic!