Young Writers Society

Rules for Snake Wranglers

General Guidelines

1. Don’t.

Unless you have some experience wrangling, or have an experienced wrangler with you, you are more likely to get hurt than you are to catch a snake. It is not a competition. Wait until you are actually ready.

2. Never Wrangle Alone.

Snake wrangling is a grand pastime, but, it is also a bit dangerous. I know, I know, you’re thinking, “But you said that you’ve only been bitten once! You said that I have a ‘good chance of escaping without injury’! What happened to all that?” But don’t get angry with me yet.

If you pay attention, then you are likely to wrangle without getting bitten, at least for a while. After you learn to wrangle, it seems reasonable that you shouldn’t get bitten, isn’t it? I mean, if you’ve been wrangling for years, you know what to expect, right?

That’s true, but it’s also true that you can’t control everything. You might misjudge how far the snake is from you, or how fast it’s moving, you might stumble across a particularly hateful snake, or you might simply get careless. I was wrangling for two years before a snake ever got me, and that was because I didn’t expect it to bite me. If I had been being careful, then it wouldn’t never would have gotten the chance.

So, if you get bitten, it will, most likely, be your own fault. But you can get hurt no matter how careful you are. You might be going after one snake, when another one appears out of nowhere. You might be chasing a snake, and meet a bear.

You might be running after a snake, and BOOM! A cavernous sink hole suddenly appears under you, and you’re sucked into the depths of an abandoned mining tunnel, where dwarves are waiting to carry you off.

You might be in the middle of an open field, when a shiny silver UFO with flashing red lights appears over top of you, and a plasma ray shoots down and sucks you into their spaceship, where a swarm of intergalactic rejects are waiting to warp you off into a parallel universe where they’ll make you their second cousin’s niece’s pet, and feed you lamb chops. You never know when these things will happen.

3. Be Sure of Your Target.

Randomly grabbing a tail that you see sticking out from beneath a bush isn’t a very good idea. Not only does that give the snake an opportunity to spin around and bite you, but you have no idea what you’re grabbing.

A brown tail could be the Garter snake that you’re anticipating, or it could be a Copperhead, or it could be sickly alien that was beamed to earth when he got shuttle-sick. Even a sickly alien could drag you back to his shiny silver ship, and have his intergalactic rejects suck you into their spaceship; and you remember what happens once you’re there.

All because you didn’t take time to identify whether you were grabbing a Garter snake or the tentacle of a sickly intergalactic reject. Don’t become a statistic. Identify your target first, grab later.

4. Learn to Identify.

In West Virginia, there are only two venomous snakes: the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake and the Northern Copperhead. As a result, identifying and avoiding venomous snakes in West Virginia is a fairly easy task, as long as you actually take time to identify each snake before you go grabbing at it. (See Snake Identification)

But there are many types of non-venomous snakes, and you should be able to identify them as well. Now, you might be tempted to say, “Now, Miss Supreme Highness, what does it matter what kind of snake I’m grabbing, as long as it isn’t venomous? A snake’s a snake.”

That’s right, but only to a certain degree. If you’re certain that a snake isn’t venomous, then you can be certain that the worst it can do is bite you; but who wants to get bitten? Not I, that’s for sure.

But error in your identification can get you bitten.

Don’t believe me? Here’s an example: you see a snake with band around its neck. What is it? Well, your initial response is probably something like, “Well that’s easy. If it’s got a band around its neck, then it’s a ringneck.”

But is it really? Maybe. But maybe not. Did you know that a racer has a band around its neck too? If you know your identification well, then it the difference is blatantly obvious; but if you don’t, then you might mistake a Racer for a Ring neck.

So you say, “Alright. I see how I can make that mistake, but what does it matter?”

Well, if you think you’re trying to catch a ringneck, and you’re actually chasing a Racer, then you’ll be in for a surprise. I hope you see how mistaking a really fast Racer for a mostly harmless, relatively slow moving ringneck, can make a difference.

Alright, I have sufficiently beaten that dead horse, so I’ll move on.

5. Don’t Talk Unless Absolutely Necessary

6. Walk Softly

The explanation for rules five and six is the same, and that is: both give you a better chance of catching a relaxed snake. The reason behind this is simple. Snakes can’t hear the way humans can. What snakes do to ‘hear’, so to say, is they sense vibrations in the ground.

And yes, no matter how slender you are, you make the very ground shake beneath you when you walk. So walking and speaking softly reduces vibrations; and it only follows that snakes that aren’t agitated by your presences make for more agreeable specimens.

7. Release Where You Catch

I believe that this rule is self-explanatory. If you catch a snake, release it in its native habitat. This isn’t to say that you can’t remove the snake to show your mom (another excellent way to get a reaction, by the way, and one that you can enjoy, as long as the snake is secure in your hands); only that if you take the snake away, be sure you put it back where you found it.

8. Don’t Try To Catch A Snake Facing You

Unless you are an experienced snake wrangler (meaning you have lost your fear of snakes; have caught many; know how snakes respond to your actions; and know what to do when snakes respond differently than expected), then trying to catch a snake facing you is a bad idea. Just don’t. If you’re not sure whether or not you’re ready to try it, then you’re not.