You're getting your leg pulled.

Snakes avoid loud noises like lawn mowers. This is a very unlikely story considering its coming from a Texan.

@WonderWartHog99 I would have thought so too. A reason why I have jingle bells attached to my walking stick - it gives snakes and people warning of my impending arrival - and if you aren't deaf you will have no excuse when I beat you death for not getting out of my way.

@FrayedBear Petunia is a motor mouth and likes to play point on our mountain hikes. She's the more expensive version of jiggle bells. After hundreds of miles on the trails, we've only found one example of wild life in the mountains.

It was a harmless hog nose snake. When challenged, they'll toss their cookies (generally it's an undigested frog) and play dead. He had decided to take a nap on the trail and didn't hear her coming.

Sometimes in urban environments the hogs come after me.

@WonderWartHog99 aagh, run back to them thar hills - it's safer!
That is a lovely statue. Where is it? - the bronze pigs aren't bad either.

@FrayedBear They (and a couple of turkey statues) are in Pack Square on the downtown Ashville (North Carolina) Urban Trail. One of the local mysteries is who stole two of the piglets.

For more detail about the animals, see: [mountainx.com]

For more detail about the 1.7 mile trail and a better picture of the pig, see: [mountainx.com]

@WonderWartHog99 one of the links didn't seem to work properly but I enjoyed some of the other articles. The ability locally to produce that type of walking trail art like some of the comments left on your site left me shuddering.

@FrayedBear Ashville has a large artist colony and dozens of craft beer breweries. Unlike Seneca it also has an international airport. The whole city is laid out based on Cherokee hiking trails making it confusing to navigate.

@WonderWartHog99 Our Capital, Canberra was planned by architects and town planners and is like being on a series of roundabouts never knowing where you are going unless you can see the sun and keep an eye on it. . . Perhaps that explains some of the governmental decisions and policies over the last 110 years!

@FrayedBear City planners make grid like designs for their cities, which is why it's fairly easy to get around in most American cities, especially New York City.

Then there's Boston. They laid out their streets based on 17th century cow trails. If you get lost in Boston, you got to think like a 17th century cow.

If you visit ancient cities, i.e. Paris, you can't go in a straight line to get anywhere.

@WonderWartHog99 the Champs Elysees is more than a mile long.

@FrayedBear Where you going on that mile?

@WonderWartHog99 Arc de Triomphe on ...

@FrayedBear Been there. Didn't want to climb to the top. Mostly it's a parade route that features wildly over priced stores.

@WonderWartHog99 It is still a straight road and considered one of the most remarkable in the world.

@FrayedBear I consider this road more remarkable:

@WonderWartHog99 Not nice. I once followed a locals advice and ended up on an almost as ugly road in the Victorian Alps when on my honeymoon. I was driving a Landrover and my now ex a Datsun 200B. And it started raining. Fortunately there was no other traffic as it was a private forestry road and the fact that it was dark probably resulted in our safe passage on the dirt track and not over the precipice. They were a little surprised to see us in the valley bottom when I knocked on the canteen hut door and af[er relating how we came over the mountain asked for directions at 10 pm! In typical Australian hospitality they said nothing, didn't offer a hot drink or a cold one but did tell us the fastest way on vehicular road out of their forest.

@FrayedBear >In typical Australian hospitality . . . .

While in your country, I must have met the atypical Australians. Either that or they they were thinking "I gotta get Shelia over here. This guy talks funny. He's not from around here."

@WonderWartHog99 You think that I sound like an Australian?

@FrayedBear As far as I know you speak English with a Cambodian accent. I knew one Australian who was making the grand tour of the US. It took him eight months to visit half the states in the US after contacting as many families as he could on the Internet. A black family in Pensacola insisted on him staying for a couple of weeks so they could get the entire neighborhood over to listen to his accent.

@WonderWartHog99 What does Cambodian sound like?
Slow on the uptake in Pensacola that they needed 2 weeks or had a lot of neighbours?

@FrayedBear

1. Ask any Cambodian you happen to meet what he sounds like. Otherwise, listen to travel guides to Cambodia. Here's one of my favorite travel shows filmed in Cambodia.

2. Pensacola is a large American city. Within the city limits the population 52,000 but if you account for greater Pensacola it's 250,000. About 30% of that are blacks. The black neighborhoods are large and sprawling. So if they invite three or four of their neighbors in per night to meet their new guest as well as members of their extended family, he's going to be there for awhile.

@WonderWartHog99 I do not know any Cambodians to ask. I live in a small town that is is predominantly white. There is still much pride held in being a fifth or sixth generation settlers kthey. are the ones who genocidally cleared the land of Australian First Nations People.
I think the sealed and tarred road only arrived 60 years ago when they received a photo from NASA that finally revealed that the shortest route between Adelaide and Melbourne passed close by the town!

@FrayedBear >I do not know any Cambodians to ask.

That why I provided you with a travel video in Cambodians where the Cambodians were babbling away -- often in English.

History of Pensacola dates back to 1559. Had the Spanish not have abandoned it after a couple of hurricanes, it would be the oldest town in the US.

>It's a rattlesnake. Capture it and release it . . . .

One of my friends is a registered Florida snake handler. I know all the right people. For the average person your advice is for the insane. Sure, pick up a rattlesnake, pet it's head, toss into the nearest brief case and wander into Alaska and release it. Even I haven't met anyone that crazy.

I'd get a long (five feet or less than two meters) stick and nudge until it leave on under it's own power.

@WonderWartHog99 I did not mean that anyone should try capturing it with their bare hands. There are safer ways of doing it.

@BestWithoutGods You were shy giving details about citing how to pick up snakes.

@WonderWartHog99 I've seen people scoop a snake up with a rake and place it in a box. That's one example. There are many ways of doing it safely.

@BestWithoutGods I've seen them back up the car and run the snake over again.

Definitely intended to be a joke.

I had a friend who got bitten by a rattlesnake under his double wide. Later at the hospital they asked him if he had any allergies. He responded that he was apparently allergic to rattlesnake bites.

Thanks for the tip!

@balou

Definitely intended to be a joke.