The smaller the track hoe is... the closer it is to the man.... the closer it is the the man, the larger the snake. Most small track hoes have a horizontal reach of less than 16 feet, now, at an upwards angle like the one it is, I'm guessing (if it's indeed a small track hoe) then it has a horizontal reach of 11-13 feet... then take into account that a track hoe has two joints, which are pulled in like this
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. TT
^^^
then the horizontal length would be probably around 6-7 feet from where the man is standing to the snake... so that is one seriously tiny man if that really is a small track-hoe.
A track hoe of a certain size can only have certain maximum proportions because it would tip while it worked otherwise--too long of an arm means too much weight on the lifted end.
If it's a LARGE track hoe that has a larger bucket, or it it is higher off the ground then the larger the snake is anyway, so who knows.
By the way, the arm is about 1.2 times the shoulder width of the man sitting--since they're right next to eachother anyway--and if he is on the low end of the shoulder width for fit men (unfit being 16-18 and fit being 19-24) with 19 inch shoulders, the track hoe arm would have a 22.8 inch width--about 2 feet, so if by the same proportions as some of the other track hoes I've been looking at, the bucket width is usually 2 times the arm width, it would be nearing 4 feet, and the snake is 5.5 times (omitting the part of the tail we can't see) the width of the bucket... so the snake's at the very least, a few feet longer than 15. By the 22.8 inch standards, it would be 20.9 feet long.
Just my two cents on measuring the snake. =/
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