What gun for Cottonmouths in the Bathroom?

[hillbilly]

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/topstories/news-article.aspx?storyid=40891

By Deanna Fene
First Coast News

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Going to the bathroom will never be the same for one local woman, not since she was bitten by a water moccasin who was apparently hiding in her toilet.

Alicia Bailey spent three days in the hospital. She's now at home but she's not resting comfortably. She remembers what happened the night she got up to go to the bathroom. "Walked in (to the bathroom) opened up the lid to the toilet and got bit by the water moccasin on the leg."

She was bitten once on the thigh, and given the size of the bite on her leg, many predict it was a very big snake. Alicia says, "His head was every bit of three fingers wide."

She was rushed to the hospital and given anti-venom, but no one knows what happened to the snake or how it got into the house in the first place.

There are woods behind the family's home off Beach Boulevard and with all the recent rain, the snake could have been looking for higher and dryer ground. The family now thinks he could have gotten into the home through the dog door, but there's still a fear, it hasn't left.

Alicia's husband, Richard is searching the home trying to find the snake. He says, "What we're leery about is closets and drawers." He carries a big stick around the house as he looks for the snake and at times his shotgun. "We're not looking to take it alive. I just want it out of here."

Alicia just wants her life, and her house, back.
"We're currently very uncomfortable in our home and toilet shy I would say, and real anxious for closure."

The Bailey's have an 11-year old son who is now staying with neighbors. They said, doctors told them, given the size of the snake, if it would have bitten him instead of Alicia, he probably would not have survived.

 

[swampsniper]

Close to home

That is right up the road. If they don't have a pet door, they likely have a clean out plug missing in the sewer line. It is a shame everyone seems to have panicked and lost track of the snake, now they have to keep worrying about it.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

When I was in Singapore in '94, there was a guy at the golf club who was bitten by a python that came up through the plumbing in the toilet. It made the front page of the Straits Times (the English language paper) and we had it framed and up on the wall in our office.

The guy who was bitten was an Olympic athlete who went there to practice the hammer throw in the early mornings. I always wanted to look him up and ask, "How's your hammer hanging NOW?"

I recommend shot loads for snakes. You can get them at Wal Mart, and the .22 LR is fine, although nowadays I tend to load my own -- a light charge of Bullseye in a .45 Colt case, with a gas check put down on top of it and the case filled with #9 shot, and an upside down gas check crimped on top.

 

[Art Eatman]

Ah, yes! the old "snake in the house" problem.

Actually, the weaponry is the least part. The bigger deal is the time lag between seeing the snake and acquiring the specific anti-snake goodies.

While you were away, where did that (Bleep!) thing go?

No snakes in an outhouse...

Spiders, though...

, Art

 

[Ezekiel]

What gun for Cottonmouths in the Bathroom?

Not the one I used for a 40 lb raccoon in my house. Six shots from a .45 -- each a "hit" and required to stop the target -- was a bad idea.

Thus far, I've learned to spackle, replace carpet with laminate wood, and had to replace two windows to the overall tune of ~$1,500...

 

[TheDutchman]

FIRE IN THE HOLE

 

[Erich]

A friend from TX told me the scariest story about finding a cottonmouth in a toilet - thank God she looked before she sat! Man, I remember those things from canoeing in IN as a lad - yikes.

Honestly, I'd be tempted to go get the 12 ga. and just blow the hell out of the throne. As they said in Aliens, "It's the only way to be sure."

 

[BryanP]

It's in the toilet? Just close the lid and flush'er down.

 

[HighVelocity]

Drop a mothball in the bowl and close the lid. The snake will leave asap. This also works to get snakes out of other small spaces like hollow trees, bird houses, fender wells, toolboxes etc.

 

[Dave R]

HiVel--that sounds like the voice of experience...

 

[Old NFO]

When I was a kid growing up in Louisiana, we had one come up the drain into the kitchen sink- My mother beat that sucker to death with a frying pan
AND Daddy had to replace the sink due to the "dings" from the frying pan and fix the drain pipe

My "personal" best was blowing the bottom out of a john boat one evening trying to kill a water moccasin that had dropped into the boat from a limb... three rounds of 00 buck DO make a rather large hole and the paddle back to the dock was a lot of fun too....

 

[armoredman]

Snakes are good eating, from what I am told. Rattlers out here usually have the decency to warn you first...a good wheel gun with snake shot in the first two or three is common trail gun.

 

[Erich]

Snakes are good eating

Right.

When I first moved out here, a cop buddy of mine took me rattler hunting, and then we had a barbeque. Said it tasted like chicken.

It tasted like snake. I poured on the barbecue sauce and jalepeños.

His wife and kids refused to eat it, btw. And there's not much creepier than a giant, be-headed and gutted rattlesnake writhing death throes in your backpack (you know how snakes continue to move after they're beheaded) while your idiot hunting partner takes his time finding his own snake to shoot.

 

[mtnbkr]

And there's not much creepier than a giant, be-headed and gutted rattlesnake writhing death throes in your backpack

I had the headless corpse of an hour or more dead rattlesnake try to strike at a friend of mine. It didn't stop responding to touch for a couple hours.

Chris

 

[bubbygator]

Yah, and they can twist around on the stub that's left of their neck!!! very creepy.

 

[El Tejon]

How about a U-Haul to move out of there.

 

[countertop]

I had the headless corpse of an hour or more dead rattlesnake try to strike at a friend of mine. It didn't stop responding to touch for a couple hours.

Yikes

 

[Matt G]

"What gun for Cottonmouths in the Bathroom? "

"A friend from TX told me the scariest story about finding a cottonmouth in a toilet - thank God she looked before she sat! "

Brings new meaning to shooting craps. . . and getting snake eyes.

Art got to it first-- this is kind of a different twist on the old (and highly effective, for me) fear of black widows coming up from the inside underside of the outhouse. [shudder]

 

[mtnbkr]

Yikes

Tis ok now. Ol Mr Buzzworm's hide is tacked to a board and hanging on the wall in my home office.

Oh, and the reason he had no head? I took it off with a shot from my GP100. Ok, so I used a 38 shotshell...

Chris

 

[Smoke]

Never had a cottonmouth, but Grandma had snakes in the bathroom on numerous occasions. Only one was ever poisonous...a rattlesnake.

Her gun of choice? ...a hoe.

Worked every time, no damage to the house.

Smoke

 

[Old NFO]

Never had a cottonmouth, but Grandma had snakes in the bathroom on numerous occasions. Only one was ever poisonous...a rattlesnake.

Well Smoke, ya gotta have water to have water moccasins Bosque Co is hill country isn't it? And I "think" the Brazos runs through there... but it's dry most of the year?

 

[H&Hhunter]

One of my all time favorite stories was one of Capstick's. When he talked about sticking both barrels of a 12 ga over the rim of the chimbuzi ( a 55 gal drum cut down and used as a latrine.) and lighting it off at a suspected snake.

Then of course was showered by the contents as they returned to earth. And the snake had the good sense to have departed long before our valiant protector of the latrine and all who dwell there decided to open hostilities.

 

[Smoke]

Well Smoke, ya gotta have water to have water moccasins Bosque Co is hill country isn't it? And I "think" the Brazos runs through there... but it's dry most of the year?

Bosque County is trying to market itself as "Top of the Hill Country"
I never really thought it was....

BRazos runs along the western border. The Bosque runs through the center. Both are loaded with Cottonmouths. Neither is ever completely dry....although we have tried real hard the lst 5 years.

Smoke - still in a drought.

 

[Old NFO]

BRazos runs along the western border. The Bosque runs through the center. Both are loaded with Cottonmouths. Neither is ever completely dry....although we have tried real hard the lst 5 years.

Thanks Smoke- I haven't been through there since the 70's. I grew up in Louisiana down in the bottoms so moccasins and cottonmouths were daily occurances

 

[CajunBass]

My mothers best friend lived down the road a piece from us. Her husband was a long haul trucker so he was away from home a lot. She called Daddy a couple of times to come down and get the snakes out of the house. They had sink drains that drained out into the woods, not to the septic tank in those days, you see the environment hadn't been invented back then, and the old snakes could crawl up the drain pipes into the bathtub, or the kitchen sink causing right much commotion in a house full of women. The mom had three daughters too you see, so a snake in the bathroom was a major crisis. Most of the critters were just black snakes, but to a house full of women folks in the 50's and 60's they were pretty close to being Ninja Gummy Snakes from Space I tell you.

Daddy wasn't much for guns, and being a farmer at heart, he probably used a hoe to reduce the resident snake population. You see, back then everybody killed evey snake they saw, it was just the social thing to do.