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OK...Here is my racer story. It isn't a story I'm particuarly proud of from my youthful herping days ... but anyway. When I was about 14 or 15 I was riding my horse down a closed dirt road (bridges were unsafe for cars and I wen't through the creeks and never crossed them anyway) When I got down where they were doing the bridge construction or reconstruction, way up on this 8-9 foot pile of gravel I could see a fairly good sized black snake. It looked to be 5 feetish...I assumed black ratsnake and decided to catch it and ride around with it for awhile and turn it loose later (I did that a lot in those days) I got off my horse and so I wouldn't have to go diving into gravel chasing after the snake, I very quietly crawled up the side of the gravel pile so I could catch the snake before he got alarmed and took off or worse... crawled into the gravel (This was large heavy boulder-like gravel used for filling in around the big pipes that were to run under the new bridge) As I got to the top, the snake raised up face to face with me like a cobra. That's when I saw the white chin and blue belly ...ICK a big old black racer. I quickly grabed the snake by the neck...I thought. He shot through my hand so fast before I could close it that when I closed my grip I had nothing but tail. I was laying on my stomach and I tried to get the other hand up higher on his body to control the thrashing but he lashed him self around and bit me on the top of my nose right between the eyes. I let go and all I could see was leaves flying through the air where he went ripping up the hillside on the otherside of the gravel pile up into the woods. It looked like a bullet shot at ground level going up through there. So I didn't have a nice little black rat to ride around with that day but I did get to sport a really bloody face.
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