#snake handling

[agirlnamedbone]

“Holiness Hands with Serpents and Bible” // 1987 // Shelby Lee Adams

[is-the-snake-video-cute]

Since green anacondas are too big to be handled solo, what does your zookeeper friend do with theirs? Like, do they just always have family or friends available to go down there with them for feeding etc? Just curious about what owning such a big snakey would be like :)

His wife is also a trained reptile handler and they only work with her together! They've had a very strict system of only ever handling her as a team ever since she was a baby just to make sure they built that habit.

It can be inconvenient to own a giant snake if you live alone! I occasionally foster rescue Burmese pythons because I love 'em and I'm fortunate enough to have the resources to maintain an emergency 12-foot enclosure in my basement, and it can be a logistical nightmare to make sure I can always get herp friends over to help when they need to be handled. I'd never actually own such a big snake for that reason.

[ozarknativethreads]

Mark 16:18

One of my recents works. This piece was inspired by an image from that old 60’s documentary, “Holy Ghost People”. I took a few liberties and added the kudzu vines.

#ozarknativethreads #mywork

[omg-snakes]

With the handling style you showed off with Lumi - what are some signs that your snake doesn't want to be handled? Sometimes my snake will shove me, and im not sure if it's because he doesn't want to be held or not because he's always fine after I pick him up, but I want to respect his boundaries as much as possible even if he doesn't retaliate when I don't.

Hey friend!

Some of the indicators that a snake isn't feeling it would be huffing or hissing, tail-rattling, flailing (big drama!), leaving the area or retreating to a hide where they feel safe, or a hard and repeated shove with the body. It does kinda seem like your boy is saying, "don' wanna," when he's shoving you, but unless it's accompanied by some other indicator that he's not feeling up to interacting, this may be the snake equivalent of a teenager being asked to get up off of the sofa and do a minor chore. They'll grumble, but it's for their own best interest and overall enrichment. If he's not showing any signs of stress during handling then he's probably getting some benefit and just didn't in the moment want to have to get up for it.

Snakes are natural introverts, and as an introvert myself I know that I benefit from regular social activities even when I'm not necessarily enthusiastic about them. While we don't want to personify snakes with human traits, it does make sense that socialization, within reason, is necessary to maintain the human-friendly nature of a well socialized pet.

An occasional invasion of his personal space will help to inoculate him against future self-isolation. The key is understanding the difference between "ugh, fiiiiiiiiine" and "I'm really not up for being social right now and I need to be left alone."

I hope your grumbly guy is actually having a nice time interacting and just being a lazy snek.

[gothicfairytopia]

so i’ve been obsessed w lucy gray handling snakes as a sort of appalachian power / pentecostal vibes thing but hear me out…

the other big and contentious pentecostal practice that got played up and sensationalized by the media was drinking strychnine. drinking poison. some people have found a parallel between snow’s poisons and snake venom, but i like the duality between snakes and strychnine (lucy gray and snow, respectively) because of the book’s theme of control.

strychnine was ingested with a similar philosophy to snake handling—health and survival after the fact are kinds of communications from god, and the endangerment is a way of testing and enacting god’s will.

if you’re bit by a snake, it’s communication from god. if you live, it’s communication from god.

with poison, it’s just a question of whether you live, not whether or not your body is subjected to the substance in the first place. snow takes that into his own hands and plays god. with snakes, apart from those that are specifically engineered by the capitol (although obviously, sometimes even then), there’s always a chance the snake doesn’t bite or doesn’t inject a lethal amount of venom (hence snow surviving the bite at the end). when snow uses poison, though, there’s hardly a chance you’ll live. himself, though? he’ll swallow poison and live, because even his own body is so tightly controlled that he builds an immunity to let himself drink what ought to kill him.

basically, two types of dangerous spiritual practice that allow people to feel empowered by divine will, but snow represents a corruption of one of them, removing fate and chance from the equation entirely.

i just will be going for appalachian cultural interpretations and the snake/poison duality emphasizing snow’s need for ultimate control makes sense to my brain

[caelistia]

[dyingforbadmusic]

Portrait of George Went Hensley - Harper Hair

2019

gouache on paper

[big-boy-noodle]

Can't believe I've had him for 5 1/2 years! He's the sweetest boy

Prince, adult male normal ball python, rescue June 2017

[insleywinsley]

Photo by Michael Turner.

[spaceintruderdetector]

https://archive.org/details/serpenthandlingb00burt/mode/2up

[henry-harrison-mayes]

Connecting Dots: Dolly Parton and an obscure serpent handling church in Middlesborro, KY

Chances are the following two events are not connected, but I found this article by Thomas Burton trying to track down the origins of a church with serpent handling roots, in Middlesborro, KY and since Dolly Parton was mentioned, I thought I'll try to find out what she had to say.

Dolly Parton about Snake Handling

"Our daddy hated church and snakes, but he loved to hear us sing. Daddy always said, 'I don't want my kids in church with no snakes.' Our church didn't handle snakes, but of lot of people handled snakes as part of their religion.

"Because Daddy didn't go to church, he would stand outside and look in the windows to hear us sing, whenever we traveled around.

"One time we're at a little church, standing up in front of the congregation singing our little hearts out and people are saying, 'Hallelujah, praise the Lord' and shouting and we're thinking, 'We're really good and we're really touching these people.' We didn't know the preacher behind us had pulled out a snake.

"All of the sudden, Daddy comes down the isle, and we had never ever seen Daddy in a church, much less shouting. He was yelling, 'You get those bleeping snakes away from my bleeping kids, you bleep, bleeping, bleepster.'"

Source / Complete Story

Serpent Handling and the Church of the Firstborn in Middlesboro, Kentucky

Rachel Raines says that the church had speaking in tongues and the drinking of poison: “We had serpent handling and all that good stuff—people being healed. My son Roger was healed there. He got burnt, the back of his legs was drawed. They prayed for him, and the Lord straighten his little legs right straight out when he was about four years old. Seen a lot of miracles—but you don’t see them today.” She didn’t handle serpents, but her husband Josh did, “He handled them, but I have always went to the back of the church. Honey, when the Holy Ghost started workin’, that’s when they got the snakes out of the box.” She adds that they had people come in from out of state, Harlan, and everywhere: “If I’m not mistaken, Dolly Parton and her daddy was at the Burchett Block at one Homecoming, and she sang and played her guitar. She was about fourteen or fifteen years old.”

Serpent Handling and the Church of the Firstborn in Middlesboro, Kentucky by Thomas Burton

[is-the-snake-video-cute]

are rosy boas good snakes if you want ones you can just chill with and hold? they've really caught my attention but i really want one i can hang out with and go a little slower than my current corn snake, who is Very Much on the move all the time. otherwise recommendations for good snakes to chill with that are in the beginner/intermediate range are welcome :)

Rosy boas are great for that! They tend to be very slow-moving and easy to hold.

A few other suggestions -

Especially if you've already got some snake experience, ball pythons are, like, the champs of being good snakes to hang out with. They can be very sensitive snakes but they're slow-moving beasts as a rule.

Sand boas are similar! You wouldn't be disappointed with one of these.

If you like the vibes of colubrids but want a slower snake, hognoses are actually really wonderful here. They're very small snakes but they move like bigger ones; they're slow-moving and much easier to just hang with than a lot of other colubrids (who are, as you note, typically very active).

[lilialimohammadi]

Snake Handling, Lili Alimohammadi

[wil-ed]

My 13 year old self would be screaming that I’m on here posting digital artwork.

Took over a decade to get access to the tools, but better late than never!

[reptilemanaustralia]

The snake man Raymond Hoser is seen here with the world’s deadliest snakes in the form or a fist full of Taipans. These are the ones with the black and white faces. The inland Taipan as seen here is the number one deadliest snake on the entire planet. So please do not copy Raymond Hoser and his snake handling methods as shown here, unless you are prepared to die. This is real and yes, you may end up dead. In any event you need to be licensed to be able to handle these snakes and breaching the license laws and getting caught may be a fate worse than death!.

[localhollerhaint]

They say I'm the babe of ol' scratch and a woman made of melanin. I'll bet she was beautiful. They say my eyes are made of moonlight but my soul is full of curses. Sometimes I believe them. Because sometimes I think my veins carry more corn likker than they do blood, and sometimes I inhale smoke so thick my lungs smolder like these hilltops. So maybe I was born a sinner and maybe Glory won't hold my name, but I've known aplenty pentecostal boys and they all talk to snakes.