Reprinted from `Fortean Phenomena Again` newsgroup:
I saw something that herpetologists declare to be mythical, a little over ten years ago, now. It turns out, to my surprise, "hoop snakes" are STILL a myth, officially! I was expecting videos of them on the net by now! I saw one; haven't others?
Hoops snakes are "mythical" creatures that grab their tails in their mouths and come rolling at you like a hula hoop! And watch out; they sting with their tails!
What I saw is best described as a hoop snake! But it did not have its tail in its mouth. Rather, it had a horizontal, "spiral staircase," or "corkscrew" form. (I usually refer to its form as that of a giant bed-spring coil, lying on its side.) It was moving horizontally along an imaginary axis drawn through its form, from my left to my right, head to tail. AND it was rolling back away from me, like you would expect a spring to roll.
I later came to suspect that this was a common black racer snake that was moving in very rare form, indeed!
I have put up a crude but functional website about my hoop snake sighting with a crude but functional, hand-scribbled depiction of what I saw.
http://hoopsnakes.yolasite.com/
When I was a little boy, my grandparents always warned me about a creature called a "hoop snake."
ReplyDeleteI never knew what they were talking about.
They always said to stay away from tall grass and log and rock piles, because you could be eaten by a "hoop snake."
It may have been their colloquialism for the copperhead, which has a venomous but rarely fatal bite. Of course, if you are a small terrier or a dachshund (their preferred dogs), then a copperhead is a potentially dangerous animal.
All I can say about your siting is that if you are successful in capturing this new species of snake, my reputation is in the "Toilet". It had to happen some time though, so I wish you all the luck in the world
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