Rattlesnake

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This one came through my camp a couple years ago. Luckily I saw it before my dog did.


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I've never heard of anything like this? What is this all about?
Snake handling, at least in the Appalachians, is sometime practices in Pentecostal and Holiness churches. They base it off Mark 16:17-18

"17;And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;18;They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
 
Hillbilly churches where they handle serpents because if you’re truly faithful enough God will protect you


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After the second not-so-great awakening in the early 1800's in rural America, as a sort of psuedo-revival branched off up into every holler in Appalachia, people really lost focus of what Christianity was about.

I lived in eastern TN for several years. I had a chance to be in some very, very rural places, and those weird offshoots of Christianity, where they usually still believe part of the core tenets of Christianity but de-emphasize them in favor of other things that are either wrong or a gross misunderstanding of the relevant texts at best, are still there. It was bizarre to see. Snake-handling was one of the worst manifestations of it, but there are others. If you were a basic evangelical Christian who understood and believed the basic, core tenets of the faith, and had some grasp of history, and you moved from the First Baptist Church of Main Street USA, a bible-believing church with some grasp of history, and found yourself casting about visiting a handful of little churches in rural Appalachia today, you'd see some strange things.

We never actually saw snake-handling. But we were aware of its existence.
 
It was a big deal here in southern WV.

I think there are maybe one or two churches' still doing it. Most of them are backwoods, hollers typer churches. Might be one left now.
 
Yes, we got across the bay within 30 minutes, that pic was the swelling right at 30 minutes. Vet was another 45 minutes away and she stayed overnight. Judging by the baggy loose skin she had the next evening she swelled up unbelievably huge. My buddy saved her life, I called him after leaving the vet and he asked me if I took off her collar and I hadn't so I called the vet and they hadn't taken it off either but agreed to remove it. He said the only dogs he's seen die were from strangulation because they swelled up so much their collar killed them. Always be sure to remove the collar whether you take them to the vet or not. She looked better the following evening and took a while for the baggy skin to go away.
I can promise you a decent envenomation from a rattlesnake will kill them in other ways besides strangulation
 
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