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Posted by regalringneck on July 18, 2002 at 06:14:47:
In Reply to: You really haven't been bitten 'til youve had a Dry bite.... posted by Chris H. on July 18, 2002 at 00:41:10:
: I worked as a student worker (slave) in south central TX one summer doing brush control studies. The job sucked, but I did get to see and deal with wild TX Indigos almost every day.
: Generally I would just get out and shoo them off the dirt roads where they seemed to like to bask early in the morning (soon after sunrise). Once in a while, we would drive down the same dirt track every day at the same time for a week or so, getting to the study plots, and see the same snake day after day.
: There was one particular 7' male we ran into every day for about week. He was always in the same spot and always facing the same direction, stretched out basking on the road in the first rays of the sun. Our whole crew got to enjoy seeing him, although only I ever got out of the truck (it was, after all, just another big indigo on the road!). This one big male decided that he wasn't going to move off the road just because a large white pickup was coming down the road (good thing it wasn't a busy paved road!).
: So I (being the snake guy in a group of plant scientists) would get out and gently pick him up at the midbody and lift him off the road. He never tried to crawl, he just let me carry him off to a clearing next to an armadillo burrow (maybe his home?).
: Well, on about the 5th morning of this routine, something was different. I got out and he started to crawl instead of just laying there as usual, but he was heading under the truck, so I grabbed him at about 2/3 of the way down his body and began to drag him backwards towards his burrow. The indignity of this act was apparently too much for this king of the road and he came back at me like a freight train. He missed once, then retargeted and landed a perfect bite on my forearm.
: I have only twice seen a TX indigo land an aggressive (non-feeding) bite. They clamp down with a force that would make a Collared Lizard proud (except the indigo mouth just about covered my whole forearm). The pain of the teeth was irrelevant compared to the crushing power of the jaws. He bit down as hard as he could (I hope!) for a good 5 seconds before I could get him to let go. I was stunned by the force those jaws could generate. God it hurt! The spot throbbed for quite a while that morning. The next day he was one the road again, and I guess all was forgiven (or maybe he knew he had taught be who was boss!).
: The only other aggressive bite I have seen by a TX Dry left a bruise on the forearm of the recipient (and this was only a 4 foot snake!).
