Quote:
Originally Posted by Lil Sis  Oh... I thought they were true.. well maybe not 
Isn't it great that we all are the same ... but different??? |
Found this:
Folklore about hoop snakes is well-known to herpetologists but universally dismissed. I quote from
Snakes of Virginia (Linzey and Clifford, 1981): "The 'hoop snake' tale is usually applied to the mud snake [
Farancia abacura] and to the rainbow snake [
Farancia erytrogramma]. Supposedly, the snake takes its tail into its mouth, forms a hoop, and rolls after the nearest human. It then tries to `sting' the person with its tail.
Should the snake jab a tree instead, the poor plant immediately wilts and dies.
that part cracked me up)
The whole story is, of course, nonsense." To be fair, there's a germ of truth to the legend. While a hoop/mud snake cannot sting with its tail, it does have a hard spine back there that can draw blood when thrashed vigorously. What's more, the snake tends to form itself into a flat, hooplike circle when relaxed. If you were an impressionable six-year-old prowling through the swamps and you came across such an apparition, you might easily imagine it was about to hoist itself to the vertical and roll after you. The only problem is, the former six-year-old who became your girlfriend's mother still believes it.
— Cecil Adams