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Subject: BS: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: keberoxu Date: 23 Feb 16 - 07:59 PM After the successful encouragement of other endangered populations in Massachusetts, like the bald eagle, now there is a proposal to encourage the endangered timber rattlesnake. The news has a story about using a remote island in the Quabbin Reservoir on which to release some timber rattlesnakes and permit them to multiply. Isn't it the Quabbin Reservoir which figured in Stephen King's Dreamcatcher? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 23 Feb 16 - 09:21 PM It makes good sense...and I imagine the habitat can support the influx of snakes. Sincerely, Gargoyle witnessed and have photos of a four foot snake plunging into a Rocky Mountain stream, surfacing, holding fish's head out of water until dead, and then eating the fish head first. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: olddude Date: 24 Feb 16 - 01:22 PM In the mountains of Appalachia were I grew up they were plentiful, now they have declined and Are protected. They are ppretty timid creatures. Deadly yes if you step on one but they prefer to just slither away from you. I had close encounters all my life and they just want to get away. They need protected, they are vital to the environment controlling rodents |
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Subject: RE: BS: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: Joe Offer Date: 24 Feb 16 - 01:31 PM Maybe they should put the refuge on Springfield Mountain? I went to Springfield Massachusetts once. Didn't find the mountain, or any snakes. I kept a lookout for snakes as I walked along the river in Springfield, though. Sure looked like snake territory to me. -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: BS: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: GUEST,GUEST, keberoxu Date: 24 Feb 16 - 06:46 PM Ah, the Pesky Sarpent. Grew up with a recording of Burl Ives crooning that one -- yes, crooning. Could have lulled somebody to sleep singing it, he could. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: Greg F. Date: 24 Feb 16 - 10:10 PM [rattlesnakes] are vital to the environment controlling rodents. Can we train 'em to control Republicans, Dan? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: Stilly River Sage Date: 24 Feb 16 - 11:38 PM Good call, Joe! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: olddude Date: 25 Feb 16 - 12:15 AM Lol Greg, maybe |
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Subject: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: keberoxu Date: 25 Feb 16 - 09:37 AM Well, fancy meeting you upstairs, snake sanctuary thread. I just started a fisher cat thread downstairs in the BS section. Destruction of habitat is a crucial factor in the interactions between humans and fisher cats. Of course this cannot be overstated with rattlesnakes either, can it? It is we humans who are eliminating the places where snakes can den in peace. hmmm....other songs about rattlesnakes? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: keberoxu Date: 09 Mar 16 - 05:55 PM A newspaper in Charleston, West Virginia, where the timber rattlesnake is the official state reptile, followed through on this story. They contacted the Massachusetts Department of Energy and Environmental Affairs, where they spoke with one Tom French. He stated that for the first ten years of the proposed project, every snake, before it is released into the island sanctuary, will be fitted with radio transmitters. This statement was made to reassure people making emotional remarks about what happens if a snake sneaks off the island and heads for the mainland shore. |
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Subject: RE: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: Joe Offer Date: 09 Mar 16 - 08:11 PM The closest encounter I've had with a rattlesnake, was when I was innocently paddling my canoe down the American River in Sacramento. A dog on the shore scared up a rattlesnake, and it went into the water and headed straight toward me. I paddled out of the way as quick as I could. But you know, that snake gets longer every time I think of it. It's up to 22 feet now. And now that I live in rattlesnake country, I think of that pesky sarpent every time I mow the lawn. But I've never seen one here. -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: Joe Offer Date: 28 May 16 - 02:35 PM The Nature Conservancy has a great article about the efforts to protect and re-establish rattlesnakes in Massachusetts:The snakes are being bred in a zoo in Rhode Island. The plan is to create a timber-rattler sanctuary on Mt. Zion — an uninhabited 1,352-acre wilderness island in Quabbin Reservoir (Boston's water supply). The island is off limits to the public. It has a lush prey base and a large boulder field for hibernation. No other hibernaculum exists for miles. There's an interesting page about Springfield Mountain here:The writer says that the song is about the 1791 Timothy Mirick. Mirick came from Wilbraham, Massachusetts, once known as Springfield Mountain. Wilbraham is a suburb of Springfield. Don't know if there are any rattlesnakes there now. Roger McGuinn has a page on the "Springfield Mountain" song here:Too rudy noo, too rudy nay Too rudy noo, too rudy nay-i-ay -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: Jeri Date: 28 May 16 - 02:51 PM There's another thread on this somewhere. Mirick/Merrick is buried in Wilbraham, and I've been to his grave yeaars ago with Bat Goddess & curmudgeon. |
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Subject: RE: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: Joe Offer Date: 28 May 16 - 03:54 PM Yeah, the best thread about the song itself is probably the origins thread. Every year in mowing season, I think of this song. Still haven't come across any snakes while mowing, and my heels are still intact. We did find a baby rattler in the garden once, and I swept him into a bucket and my wife released him in the woods. We went hiking in the American River Canyon Thursday. I kept a watchful eye, but didn't see any snakes. The hillsides of Clarkia flowers were magnificent, though. But I was sure them hills were full of snakes. |
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Subject: RE: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: Stilly River Sage Date: 28 May 16 - 07:30 PM I think my father did some in-depth research into that song at one point. I'll have to look through his notes. |
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Subject: RE: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: mkebenn Date: 29 May 16 - 08:47 AM I believe Joe,s experiences are the norm. I lived on the western edge of the Everglades for 15yrs, spent much time fishing and tromping in the swamp and saw one pigamy rattler, and he was a flat animal.Rat snakes and cottonmouths, yes, and those black bastards are are a piece o' work. As for people thankful for radio collars to track "escaped" snakes, they know nothing of the critters. Mike |
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Subject: RE: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: Bat Goddess Date: 29 May 16 - 11:38 AM Timothy Myrick/Mirick/Merrick (you'll find all the spellings in the old graveyard in Wilbraham). Tom (Curmudgeon), Jeri, and I found his grave some years ago thanks to directions from both Michael Cooney and the Ann and Frank Warner book. Timber rattlers used to be fairly common in New England, but they don't much like to be moved. Individual snakes generally stay within a very small territory. Some years ago then governor Meldrim Thomson stated that there were no rattlesnakes in New Hampshire. Someone from the Rattlesnake Mountain section of Raymond, NH (next town over from me in Nottingham) brought Thomson a bagful and dumped them out on his desk in proof that there are, indeed, timber rattlers in New Hampshire. Linn |
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Subject: RE: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: keberoxu Date: 29 May 16 - 04:31 PM talking of governors: Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker says he is personally not into snakes, but he is persuaded that the refuge is a good thing. |
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Subject: RE: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: GUEST,keberoxu Date: 15 Aug 16 - 03:48 PM It's that time of year. Saw a Letter to the Editor today from a Massachusetts state-agency herpetologist. The adult male timber rattlesnakes are moving around in search of eligible females. The whole letter was a defense of the endangered timber rattler. I was not aware, before the statement in this letter, that ye olde Puritans used to make a point of locating dens and exterminating every last rattlesnake therein. The letter also testifies to the police responding to a call about an adult male rattlesnake near someone's house. The letter praises the police for handling the rattler with the respect due an endangered-species specimen, trapping it alive, and taking it well away to give it a less hostile place to live. Massachusetts citizens, the noisy defensive ignorant ones, are up in arms about having a timber rattlesnake sanctuary on an island in the manmade Quabbin Reservoir in north-central MA. Actually the rattler trapped in the previous incident was not only a fair ways away from the Quabbin Reservoir, it was on the South Shore -- in West Quincy! While this area includes a geographic feature called the Blue Hills, with a Reservation (beautiful site), the locale's outstanding feature today is State Route 128, one of the Hub's wheel-rims, connecting bedroom communities for commuters to urban Boston. That poor snake is lucky he WASN'T slaughtered this summer. |
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Subject: RE: Massachusetts Snake Sanctuary? From: keberoxu Date: 19 Mar 17 - 04:49 PM Update: there now exists a Rattlesnake Review Group, available for meetings with the locals who live around the Quabbin Reservoir where the proposed refuge would be located. The group has 13 members. Their next meeting is in Ware, Massachusetts, at the K of C Hall, on 22 March. Remarks from the review group's guest speakers, like the state herpetologist and a professor from U Mass Amherst, have been less about the snakes' threat to humans, and more about the humans posing a threat to the snakes. article in the Worcester Telegram |
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