OldHat63

  Well no wonder he's cranky...   If it weren't for nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol, I'd probably have gotten myself killed decades ago. Or at very least, gotten a whole new prison built, just for me.   It's also quite possible that, take away those three things, I might die of malnutrition. :ugh:

  OhShoot just needs to quit washin' that Geritol down with cheap whiskey and he'll be fine. :drunk: :panic: :D

  No more so than usual... Needless to say there's more than a few folks talkin' about me these days. Most of 'em not happy at all.   Sucks to be them, is all I've got to say.   I'm still here on my hill with my dogs, watchin' the world go by. :pleased:   Speaking of that, I did end up losin' one of 'em last month, out of the clear blue.  The one I went down to meet Sgt. Joe and Capbyrd and get back in 2010 got sick May 29th, and died on June 5th... after a nearly $500 trip to the vet. The doc said there was something wrong with her liver that was causing her to lose all of her red blood cells.   The odd thing is, she was the "replacement" for one I'd lost suddenly 5 years before... and the youngest dog here.   Oh, and as you've no doubt figured, the... um... individual? who I was having so much trouble with back in 2012 is no longer here. And yes, there's a long ugly story to that.   Ah well... at least I managed to get the kid up past 18 before things went completely to :poop:.   Hope you and the rest have been having a more pleasant time than I have while I was MIA.

  Muddlin' along...    Sorry about the "change of face" as it were.  Kind'a lost the old password to the previous account and had to make another. David said something about merging the accounts when I spoke to him about it. I suppose he'll get there when he has time. :shrug:   I figured Oh Shoot would know me right off, if I posted in a snake thread first.  I guess he's too busy wranglin' them mountaintop cotton mouths... :devil:

    It'd be even better if it grew to 30 feet and ate ex-wives....   I'd be breedin' the things.

  A cornered or pissed-off black racer will put on a good show in order to get you to go away and leave it alone. They'll do their best impersonation of a rattler, cobra, etc. by coiling up and striking as you describe.   And even though they don't have fangs, they have enough very sharp, backwards-pointing teeth to make a bite painful... and hard to get loose from your delicate hide when they clamp down and hang on.   I still have some very faint scars at the base of my right thumb from one such encounter. ... which is probably better than the bullet holes I almost got due to the same snake. :ugh: ( No, the Racer wasn't packin' a gun. The owner of the truck I hopped off of to go catch it was though... and also had a rather severe phobia regarding snakes. He "objected" when I offered to bring him the snake to inspect.  Let me have a look at his very nice S&W snubby instead... from the muzzle end. :eek:  )

      The hissing and biting when it saw you? :taunt:   It's either that or the vent scale... :shrug:

Pine snake.... Pituophis melanoleucus.  They can get rather large. 6 or 7 feet, if they live long enough. Have had more than a couple of 'em show up around here, over the years. Won't hurt you, but might make you hurt yourself.