Screamworthy!

Left: Canebrake rattler photo from Kingsnake.com.



Lesson: Don't leave luggage open on the porch!

Snake crawled in man's luggage in SC and bit him when he unpacked in VA.

The Associated Press • March 25, 2008

McLEAN, Va. -- A high school coach emptying his luggage after a team trip to South Carolina was bitten by a small rattlesnake that had somehow gotten into his bag, authorities said.

Andy Bacas in was stable condition at Inova Fairfax Hospital, fire officials said. He remained hospitalized Tuesday morning.

Bacas, a rowing coach at Yorktown High School in Arlington, told authorities he felt a sharp pain on his hand Monday when he reached into his luggage. He then saw the nearly foot-long snake and slammed the suitcase shut.

Fire and rescue workers took the suitcase outside, opened it and blasted the snake, identified as a juvenile canebrake rattler, with a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher. The chemical essentially froze the animal to death.

"The guy who responded had seen (the fire extinguisher technique) done on TV," Arlington County Fire Department spokesman Ben Barksdale said.

Bacas' son, Peter, said the luggage had been left open on a porch during the trip to Summerton, S.C., which is about 75 miles northwest of Charleston. Barksdale said he had no information that the snake was deliberately put into the luggage.

Bob Myers, director of the American International Rattlesnake Museum in New Mexico, said it's conceivable that a snake would crawl into luggage seeking warmth or shelter.

The venom from a canebrake rattlesnake can be particularly harmful, but a young snake is not usually large enough to deliver enough to be lethal, Myers said. Adult canebrakes can grow to 6 feet.

"There's an old wives' tale that says a baby rattlesnake bite is worse than an adult bite, but that's just not true," Myers said.

Three or four people die each year from rattlesnake bites in the United States, out of perhaps 8,000 bites a year, Myers said.

(((screams)))
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Evel Knievel 1938-2007

Robert Craig Knievel, Jr., aka Evel Knievel, has passed on. My mother adored him, and now he is gone, as indeed, she is also gone.

He was crazy, and everyone in the 70s loved him for it. This was back in the day, before everybody did weird things to get on TV. Evel Knievel was ahead of his time, and understood public relations. He would talk to anyone, any time. About himself, of course.

Knievel was a pole vaulter, hockey player, and insurance salesman, before getting into the motorcycle business. He was a bust as a salesman, but soon found his calling as a professional motorcycle-daredevil, jumping over a box of rattlesnakes, mountain lions, a cargo van, a speeding motorcycle, Greyhound buses, double decker-buses (in London) and cars. Lots and lots of cars. As a child, I watched with heart pounding as he smashed into the pavement, again and again, one of the famous filmed intros to ABC's WILD WORLD OF SPORTS.

One of his biggest disasters was his jump over the fountains at Caesars Palace, which made him ultra-mega-famous, but left him in a coma for 29 days. At some point, it seems he broke nearly every bone in his body, while doing daredevil jumps at $25,000 a clip. Going to see Evel in one of these shows was like going to see a rock star or a concert, and people lined up for the opportunity.

The Snake River Canyon jump was first conceived because the US Government would not allow Evel to jump over the Grand Canyon, which is a national park, after all. I recall conversations on late night TV, in which it was posited that he might jump from skyscraper to skyscraper (later seen in THE MATRIX), and it was thought he might actually be insane, but nobody cared. He broke a record selling tickets at the Houston Astrodome, as he also broke a record on February 28, 1971, jumping over 19 cars in Ontario, California.

Weirdscifi describes the Snake River Canyon jump:

Knievel hired former Navy engineer Bob Truax to build a rocket-powered Sky-Cycle. The Sky-Cycle cost over $150,000 and was unsuccessful in clearing the canyon in test runs. Despite this, Knievel decided to make the attempt.

“I didn’t think I even had a 50-50 chance to make it,” Knievel remembers. “Everyone told me not to do it, but I was determined to keep my word, so I climbed up and got strapped in. When I punched that power button I thought, ‘God, here I come.’”

The parachute of the Sky-Cycle deployed almost immediately after launching and Knievel fell to the riverbank hundreds of feet down in the canyon. He escaped with minor injuries.

He brawled, he drank, he got hepatitis, he filed for bankruptcy. He was sued by the state of Montana for back taxes. He was busted for soliciting an undercover policewoman, as well as possessing illegal firearms. He also played himself on The Bionic Woman and his likeness was made into a plastic toy action-figure for little boys across the USA.

Evel Knievel became a Christian earlier this year, and it is my prayer that he rest in peace. He was always big, it was the canyons that got small.

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