Quote Originally Posted by Seanjackmc View Post
Maybe you should give that advice to your friend! Hope he is ok. I have no idea what an atrox is either. Neither does Siri so it must not be a real species of anything. Is there a common name you can use for us slow folks.
Slow, probably more accurately lazy or ignorant. As has already been stated google is your friend. Perhaps if you spend more than a year in this hobby and your interests grow to more than just what the next exciting ball python morph is you'll begin to understand that common names for different species are a lot less useful than you might think and can often lead to confusion. This thread is a prime example." Western rattle snake", am I talking about crotalus Oreganis, crotalus viridis, crotalus atrox? What if I was to say copper head? In North America most people would think of agkistrodon contortrix, but I could just as easily be talking about Austrelaps superbus. Same common name, VERY DIFFERENT SNAKE.
Quote Originally Posted by Skiploder View Post
Your advice is solid - in this case there was no need to pin the snake.
Yep I'm going to have to agree with both skip and crotalus on this one. Pinning a venomous snake is the very last resort for handling hots. It puts the keeper at the most risk, and it's the reason that hot keepers have developed dozens of techniques to avoid doing it. It's good that the op didn't get hurt doing it, but I think it's important for people reading this thread especially those that don't work around hots regularly; understand that there is a bunch of safer ways to manipulate a venomous snake. If for no other reason than in the interest of keeping people safe in this exact type of situation.