Just days after a column appeared in The Ledger discussing the decline of the Eastern diamondback rattlesnake because of human persecution, a news report confirms how misguided human persecution can be.\n<\/p>\n
According to Polk County Fire Rescue, some unnamed man shot a rattlesnake\u2014there were no details on why he thought it was necessary to shoot it or whether he put any thought to it at all\u2014and then the wounded snake took its revenge.\n<\/p>\n
Apparently the guy tried to pick it up by hand and was bitten by the wounded, but not dead snake. The ma n was airlifted to a hospital for treatment.\n<\/p>\n
No other details were available. The press release said the snake was more than 5 feet long, but there was no independent verification.\n<\/p>\n
Recently local authorities claimed to have captured a 7-foot Banded Water Snake that wandered into a Lake Wales woman’s home, but the photo provided to the press showed a snake that was much shorter.\n<\/p>\n
This species typically grows to 4 feet, which is about what it looked like in the photo.\n<\/p>\n
There seems to be a lot reptile size inflation going on around here ever since that trick photograph of the alligator at Circle B.\n<\/p>\n
Getting back to the rattlesnake issue.\n<\/p>\n
Rattlesnakes, like alligators, are content to leave us alone if we leave them alone.\n<\/p>\n
They have other things on their little minds.\n<\/p>\n
If you see a rattlesnake or any other venomous reptile, give it some room and let it pass.\n<\/p>\n
If you must shoot it, use a camera.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just days after a column appeared in The Ledger discussing the decline of the Eastern diamondback rattlesnake because of human persecution, a news report confirms how misguided human persecution can be. According to Polk County Fire Rescue, some unnamed man shot a rattlesnake\u2014there were no details on why he thought it was necessary to shoot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}