Wow!  That doesn't seem like it was that long ago!  Hi everyone!!  

Lookie what I found! 

We should do another:

Snakes On A Plane: The Sssssssssssequal

Those were the polaroids that Edieraye took when she was there. She gave them to me to scan and post, but I lost them... until now.

YAY!

I did.  I remember when you all did that.  Everyone looks so young, even winter.

I did.  I remember when you all did that.  Everyone looks so young, even winter.

Did anyone take a look at the pics I posted?

Did anyone take a look at the pics I posted?

GOT DAMMIT!

Copperhead in the cockpit


Snakes on a plane is a cool movie premise, but pilots
say other critters pose bigger threat


12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, September 3, 2006
By DAVE LEVINTHAL and MICHAEL GRABELL / The Dallas Morning News

Soaring solo over Ohio in his single-engine Piper, Monty Coles noticed a little head poke out from inside his instrument panel.

Next thing he knew, a 4-foot-long rat snake shot out. He hit it with a radio, then grabbed its neck. Far from dead, the snake coiled around his arm. "When I saw that little head, I knew it was going to be a bad day. I had a fistful of snake and a fistful of plane," Mr. Coles said of the May incident. But close encounters with the slithering kind like Mr. Coles' almost never happen – despite what a new Samuel L. Jackson movie, Snakes on a Plane, might have you believe.

An analysis of about 182,000 accidents and incidents in the Federal Aviation Administration database turned up only one time in which a venomous snake caused an aircraft to crash.

In fact, you're far more likely to find your flight disrupted by drakes (an average of 90 ducks strike aircraft each year) or steaks (since 1990, at least four cows have been hit in Texas) than snakes. And among reptiles, federal records indicate, alligators and turtles have proven to be greater hazards to aircraft than their slithering cousins. In the current summer movie, a mobster unleashes venomous snakes on a plane to kill a murder witness. But aviation experts say the scenario of snakes crawling through air ducts, slithering out of toilets and popping from oxygen mask compartments is highly unlikely.

"I would say it's pretty unrealistic," said Dan McCune, safety officer at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Most commercial airlines, including American and Southwest, prohibit snakes in carry-on or checked baggage. American allows nonvenomous snakes in cargo but never more than a handful at once.

"Unless you have a Seeing Eye dog or a service animal, we're just not going to do it," said Southwest spokesman Ed Stewart, noting that his airline bans animals.

Bulkhead defense
Even if a snake were on a plane, the cabin and the cargo are completely separated. "Because of the fact that cargo holds have to be sealed against fire, it's extremely unlikely that there would be any sort of path for a snake to use," said Boeing spokesman Jim Proulx. But, he cautioned, "We never say never in this business."

It did happen once – albeit in a helicopter. According to the investigation report, a helicopter pilot was flying over Rock Hill, S.C., in May 1991 when he turned on the cockpit heat and a copperhead snake emerged from a vent. He tried to land, but as he approached, the snake appeared poised to strike. He tried to step on it and lost control of the helicopter, crashing into trees. The craft was destroyed, but the pilot survived. Investigators never did find the snake or determine how it got into the helicopter. But co-workers suspect something sinister.

"That snake sure didn't crawl into that helicopter. Somebody put it in there," said Jere Fowlkes, the company's president at the time. "There was some guy who had said something inappropriate of this guy's wife, and I think he threatened to beat the crap out of him, and this guy got back at him by sliding this snake in there."

Vipers in the news
A search of news reports found other snake incidents:
• In 2000, two pet garden snakes escaped on an Alaska Airlines flight from Anchorage, prompting the flight attendant to announce the dinner options as beef, chicken or snake.
• In 2003, passengers heard a creepy noise in an overhead bin on a Qatar Airways flight to Rome. When someone opened the compartment, he found a 3-foot-long snake that had escaped from a bag.
• And in 2004 at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, a worker pried open some unclaimed freight and found nearly 100 reptiles, many of them venomous, shipped from Tanzania.

But fear not, flyers. Snakes are among the least of your worries. About 98 percent of all animal-related aviation incidents involve birds, according to the FAA, and animals cause at least $300 million in damage to U.S. aircraft annually. In all, more than 300 people have died because of bird strikes since the first reported incident in 1912. And ever since the dawn of aviation – Orville Wright killed a bird while flying over Dayton, Ohio, in 1905 – natural flyers and mechanical flyers have hardly experienced a benign coexistence.

In 1960, 62 people died when a plane crashed into Boston Harbor, its engines clogged with a flock of birds. One of the worst military air disasters occurred in 1995, when birds caused an E-3B AWACS jet to crash into an Alaskan forest, killing 22 Americans and two Canadians aboard.

Shell-shocked
A tortoise once took down a T-38 military plane after being sucked up from a runway into the craft's underbelly, said Randy Smith, a Texas-based biologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services.

"It shot through the engine like a cannonball," he said. As for Mr. Coles, his cockpit encounter ended when he landed safely – and quickly. Upon exiting his craft, he threw the snake into a field, and it slithered away.

As for watching Snakes on a Plane, the movie? "I don't need to watch it – I've lived it," he said. "I think I've seen enough snakes on a plane to last me a lifetime."

E-mail dlevinthal@dallasnews.com
and mgrabell@dallasnews.com

Lexie, David...back at ya!

Will load 'em up tomorrow...too pooped to mess with all that right now!

Charleston, Hilton Head and Savannah were great!

Out of all 3...having to choose one....Savannah really impressed me the most...just fabulous!

Pictures! Pictures! Pictures! (of your vacation)

Glad to see you all had a great time at SoAP! Laughed about the group of you while I was away on vacation, anytime I saw something about it along the way.

Glad to see you all had a great time at SoAP! Laughed about the group of you while I was away on vacation, anytime I saw something about it along the way.