Egon, 12 inch Bowie knife? How archaic. With the advent and widespread use of cordless power tools such primitive measures are no longer required.

Right! Recall such things as keep the victim calm, no exertion etc. This, along with the advice to seek prompt medical attention.

OK, so assume I'm back in the S-E corner of my property, 1/2 mile or more from any road and I get bit. So, do I lay down and stay calm while waiting to see if I die or do I hike 3/4 mile to a phone and call for an ambulance that is 25 miles away and then drive to meet it to minimize the time required to make contact? Depersonalizing this a bit, the kernel I am trying to tease out is that the advice, most commonly given, is potentially contradictory. 1. Keep victim calm, still, etc. 2. Expedite victim to available medical assistance.

If you are alone does this mean walk slow toward medical assistance, transport, or communications? HMMMM...

Did you hear about the snake that was so poor (HOW POOR WAS HE???) He was so poor that he didn't have a pit to hiss in.

Last week in a dimly lit corner of my mom's garage a small snake about 16-18 inches in length got cranky with me, hissing and repetitively striking. Unfortunately due to poor lighting and his agitated state, I couldn't see his eyes well and he was making himself look viperish, so I stepped on his head quite forcefully and to my dismay when I took his lifeless form out into the light he was NOT a poisonous variety.

Typically, I can readily ID a snake as poisonous/non-poisonous due to limited variety of poisonous snakes hereabouts: various rattlers, copperhead, water moccasin/cottonmouth. A couple days ago when I drive my tractor to the barn to R&R the sickle bar mower with the brush hog there was a 3 1/2 -4 ft black snake with a racing stripe sunning in the south entry. He immediately went and hid under the brush hog. I ignored him until after attaching the brush hog and then raised it up and couldn't see him so I guess he left before or while I was hooking up. Given the number of mice and either real large mice or small rats that I saw while brush hogging I can see how he grew to that size. The pasture is a target rich environment.

Patrick