Reptile & Amphibian Forums

the one where I get bitten by a venomous snake. I have this dream four or five times a year. This is been going on for 10 years or so. The snake is always an eastern diamondback, coral snake or cobra of one persuasion or another. It's interesting because I'm not a regular keeper of hots. I have some native venomous that I come across fairly regularly, usually diamondbacks, but I don't keep them around very long (usually just a few weeks).

In my dream last night, I was handling a small diamondback that was having trouble shedding its skin. It had a little skin left on its head, and I was holding it in one hand and trying to pull the skin off with my other hand. The snake started twisting its head and got me twice on my left hand. I remember hoping in the dream that it was the snake's rear teeth that got me and not the fangs. But the second bite was with a single fang. Before I could assess the damage, I woke up. That always happens as well; I always wake up before I have a reaction to the bite.

The story behind this dream is based on fact. Last week, one of my brother's farm hands captured a small diamondback in a peanut field. He brought it to me, and I kept it for a day or two. It had some skin left on it from a shed attempt, including some on its head. I returned it to the wild in a safe place last Wednesday. Five days later, the snake reappears in my dream and gets me.

RP

I've also had dreams in which I've been bitten by a venomous snake. In fact, I just had one last night. Last night, I dreamt I got in a couple of large adult cobras, black ones, probably black Egyptians or something was what my mind was telling me. The female managed to get a quick nip on the underside of my forearm. Usually in dreams, I'm nailed by a snake and hope that it's a dry bite, and from what I can remember they've always been dry. This time though, I remember hoping for that, but noticing a red lesion area on my arm after a short time. I even remember it starting to hurt, and eventually start blistering. For some stupid reason, I never want to go to the hospital to seek treatment, I guess because of the money or something. Who knows. This dream was extremely realistic to me, and when I woke up this morning I actually checked my arm to make sure it was just imagined.

They're always disturbing though, and I guess a good way for a venomous keeper to always stay conscious...through subconsciousness...that's odd...about what could possibly happen.
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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com

Weird...

Mine are a little different. I never get tagged in my dreams, but I've had 2 or 3 dreams over the last few years involving hots that go basically the same way. One I remember for sure was with our 10 foot King Cobra, one may have been a forest cobra and maybe one with a black mamba, I don't remember the snakes for sure. It always starts with me in the snake room, getting the snake out of the cage to put it in a box or vice versa. Next thing I know, either I'm in my bedroom (very cluttered) or there are obstacles all over the floor of the snake room. Once I was even standing on top of my waterbed (with various clutter on the bed) trying to balance while controlling the snake! Then visitors start coming in the room to see the snakes and won't listen to me when I tell them to stay out... So there I am trying to get a large uncooperative snake into a box without tripping over anything while trying with one hand to keep visitors away from the snake. Most disturbing! Before anything goes wrong, I get to that point where I say "wake up you idiot, this has to be dream!"

Needless to say, I'm sort of a stickler for keeping clutter off the snake room floor while someone is working...

I don't normally dream as I pretty much know right off the bat when I am dreaming and wake up out of it comletely or start playing around with the dream by 'altering' it with a semi-concious mind which sorta ruins the whole spontenaity of it all. However, last week was a bit weird even for me.

I've never had any dreams about snakes let alone venomous snakes in the past so this was totally new ground for me...sharks yes, snakes no.

I have NO clue what my subconcious was trying to put out but even though I knew it was a dream this was one of those rare times I actually couldn't alter it for some reason lol.

It all started with something about having a party at the house, inviting people from work and friends over, but ended up having only one person show up. I got bored with it all and somehow I suddenly find myself in Walmart of all places and am looking at some cages that are sitting on shelves on the endcap of an isle. On the very top shelf is a 20 gallon long tank with a graybanded kingsnake in it for sale for $35. I was like cool, i know someone who wants one of those and that was a good price. I reach up and pull the tank off the shelf and set it on the floor to open it up so that I could get the snake out take a closer look at it (I mean come on.. $35 for a full grown grayband almost too good to be true so I wanted a close look at it). Suddenly, there are a handful of friends standing next to me. Friend #1 tries to help me by going into the cage and pulling out a snake and handing it to me to hold only it's not the grayband, but a different snake. Until that moment I could have sworn the cage only had a single snake in it - the grayband. Also, when I first saw the tank on the shelf the snake had a single wooden branch in the tank with carpet for the substrate and a blue water bowl, but suddenly it changed and was now a full fledge vivaria type setup. Then Friend #1 digs around and pulls out a full grown normal corn snake and hands it to Friend #2 to hold while Friend #1 goes back to looking through the branches, silkplants and mulch and such for the dang grayband I wanted to examine. Somewhere in all this I remember seeing a medium size monitor lizard, but can't remember if it was in the same cage or I just happened to be looking at a different cage at that point. Ok, there I am standing around holding a flawless bright yellow snake. The snake is very calmly wrapped around my hand. I remember offhandly looking at the snake and thinking oh what a nice pretty color and such a wide head but then there was a 'wrong' feeling to it all.. it takes me a long 5 minutes of thinking on this before it dawns on me as I look closer - I am holding an eyelash viper! I remember going somewhat cold and getting worried but not actually panicking. I then started asking around for anyone to please PLEASE find me an empty cage right this very second so I can put the snake into it only to have everyone just look at me perplexed lol. I knew it was a wasted effort to even try to explain to them that what I was holding (free handling) was a venomous snake. Finally I suddenly see an empty cage next to the other cage on the floor and carefully get the snake into the empty cage and put a screen top onto it and a sigh of relief. The snake never struck or acted in an agressive manner.. very nice calm snake actually. Then I got very irate over the fact that Walmart would have the nerve to house a venomous snake in a cage with other snakes that people could easily get into (nevermind the fact that they were selling it in the first place let alone that they had a kingsnake housed with other snakes). All I wanted at that point was to get the top of the cage holding the viper taped down and take it out of the store and get it into safe hands (ie a professional hot keeper at the reptile house at the zoo or something). Then while looking around for a store manager to berate I had thoughts about possibly filing a lawsuit ROFL...then I woke up. Dangit..now that I think about it, I never did get a chance to examine that damn graybanded before it all ended... it was still buried under the mulch substrate.

I don't keep venomous snakes. I don't handle venomous snakes. I don't want to keep venomous snakes. I know my limits. But, as I said before I'd be damned if I knew what was going on inside my head the other night. Hell I don't even shop at walmart. Out of all the 'friends' I vaguely remember standing around me only one made sense to me when it came to the whole 'snake' issue the rest didn't fit.
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DP