The amazing story about a West Richland snake having legs was too amazing to be true.
Nancy McLeod contacted the Herald on Thursday, saying she had what she thought was a rattlesnake with a pair of tiny leglike appendages.
A reporter and editors ran with the tale, but more than a few readers savvy about snakes notified the newspaper Friday morning that those legs were more than likely the reptile's sex organs, which were expelled from the body when it was tossed alive onto a pie of burning tumbleweeds.
"Those aren't legs at all," said Mike Wingfield, a Richland resident, self-described retired snake handler and amateur herpetologist. He said the appendages are the snake's hemipenes, a sexual feature also present in lizards.
"When snakes die in agonizing pain, like being burned alive, the penises expose themselves," he said.
Kenneth V. Kardong, who is a faculty member at Washington State University's biological sciences division, said the picture of the dead snake in the Herald showed what looked to him like hemipenes.
"We don't know why they have two, not one (penis). But it would give them great bragging rights in the locker room," he said.
McLeod said she had no clue as to what the appendages really were. "They looked like legs to me," she said Friday after being told the snake story didn't have legs to stand on.
"It doesn't matter to me," McLeod said. She said she plans to give the dead snake to the museum at WSU in Pullman, if officials there still want it.
