Last week I was checking in my garden, looking for cukes ready to pick, judging when the ‘maters would be turning a nice tasty red or when the blooms on the melon vines would set.
All the vines are crowing together, so I was reaching in without looking first and spreading the plants so I could see better, when I felt a sharp smack on the middle finger of my right hand, and then seeing more movement than my hand being pulled back from the plants.
Indiana is home to the Black Rat Snake. I had inadvertently got too close, or maybe even hit her in the head and she let me know with a tap on the finger. Bloody but no pain. These snakes are not aggressive, and can be handled if one uses care. It was my fault I was bit. I handle these snakes here all the time. It was the first time I have been hit since Sept 1982, when I stepped on a 3 foot Timber Rattlesnake and was hit on the instep of my boot several times. His skin is mounted over the door to our home office.
When I tell of my encounter with the Rat Snake the first question is, “Oh no, are they poisonous?” I cringe when I hear the question. I cringe more when I read similar things in print.
Snakes and spiders are not poisonous. Poison is adsorbed by the victim, the poisonous animal, the animal having no control over whom or what is poisoned. There are several breeds of frog that are poisonous and touching them poisons you.
Snakes are either venomous or non-venomous. Black Rat Snakes are the latter, Rattlesnakes the former. The Rattlesnake injects the venom into their pray via fangs. In the case of scorpions, bees, and wasps or hornets, it stingers that inject the venom.
Now that the issue is clear, I am going to it muddy up a bit, but not too much, because as far as I know this exception does not apply to any animal in the US.
The one exception that stands out is the Spitting Cobra. This Cobra spits the venom into the eyes of its pray, where the poison blinds the victim, then it bites, injecting the venom into its pray causing neurological damage and death.