Day Twenty Two -late-

[ink_in_hand]

Barely could even get this out. for Dial. From the minute I woke up I've been hit with a migraine and around the time I would have started trying to to do my daily pic I discovered that Onge, my ball python is starting to get mouth rot, cue running around trying to figure out what I can do for her here at home and thoroughly cleaning her enclosure like mad while getting her old one out of storage.

Almost didn't bother even trying today. Someday I'll get back to Dial and draw him again when I'm not stressing the fuck out.

And I know I've fallen behind a bit with some of my comments in places, I'll try to get to those as soon as I can.

Comments

[eerian_sadow]

oh yeah. huge actual threat, since in a teeny little spot-on-the-map town isn't much of a deterrent for them. they really would do things like decide to nest in the school playground over the summer or hang out in the local parks. there was a population boom that put a stop to a lot of that right before we moved away, but that didn't stop the fear from being pretty well ingrained. i do handle seeing snakes a lot better now than i used to, though.

[ink-in-hand.livejournal.com]

See, that's rather sad. Michigan has one rattler and it's rather rare, so we were taught how to recognize it in relation to all the other harmless snakes we've got. So while I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around the 'all snakes are bad' mindset, there are places that I forget that do have to manage a balanced relationship with an animal that is dangerous, and that can be very lethal. Especially to those who are unaware of the danger.

[eerian_sadow]

i wish we had been taught to recognize that and the cottonmouth as dangerous and that the others native to our part of the state as perfectly okay (because they totally are! i loved the hog nosed snakes that lived under our house because they were great helpers in the war against indoor pests), but that's not the way they do it at all out there. wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so prevalent, but they're everywhere and so...

it's an interesting contrast between eastern and western kansas, though. the diamond back rattler doesn't come over into the easter part of the state much because the climate is wrong for them and so people out here are like "what? kansas has dangerous snakes? really?" (though i do tend to want to hit them with large, solid objects when they prove themselves to be that ignorant.)

[ink-in-hand.livejournal.com]

We get hog nosed snakes too, though their puff up display once had an uncle of mine convinced they were cobras. yeah-no I love those snakes, and apparently I used to play with them all the time when they were everywhere as a child though I don't remember.

That's weird, never would have guessed they were only in one half of Kansas. So you could sorta group me with those people, but then I've never lived or even visited there.

[eerian_sadow]

wow, cobras? really? uh... those aren't even native to this continent.

yep, apparently they don't like how "moist" eastern kansas is. (and that's entirely a relative term, because the humidity isn't really that much greater, but apparently it's just enough.) being non-local definitely excuses it, but really people in the state, even the moist parts, should be aware of the things that can kill you in your home region. cause from Kansas City, it's not as far west as you might think before you'll start encountering them alongside the road when your car breaks down.

[ink-in-hand.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my uncle is uh, special. In the willfully ignorant kind of way, a couple of summers back he said he caught a cobra and got it in a bucket, first thought it was someone's escaped pet or something but no, there's this haggared little hog nosed annoyed at being bothered by two legged giants instead.

Sometimes I enjoy the Darwin Awards more than I morally should, if just because people don't bother to do research in this vast information age.

[eerian_sadow]

poor snake!

i also enjoy the Darwin Awards more than i should. (but i also feel better about knowing that those sorts of idiots will no longer be attempting to raise other human beings and send them out to join the rest of the population.)