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Feb. 3, 2005, 7:26PM
Hoop-snake sightings still rolling in
By LEON HALE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
One of the customers, Joyce Denham, has sent me a hoop-snake-sighting report, the first I've received in almost two years.
She was at Langtry, which is upstream from Del Rio on the Rio Grande, and she saw this hoop snake rolling across what she calls the desert.
Nothing especially exciting in the report. Just that snake, making a circle of itself and rolling along, not bothering anybody.
I've been getting hoop-snake stories for I guess 50 years. A reptile of this kind puts its tail in its mouth, arranges itself in a circle, and travels by rolling like a hoop at impressive speeds.
All the snake books I ever read, written by experts, say no such creature exists. Yet I keep getting these hoop-snake-sighting reports, from perfectly intelligent people.
I ought to tell you that Denham saw that snake a long time ago, and is just now telling me about it. Most of the sightings I hear about happened a long time ago that way. I would be really interested in receiving a hoop-snake sighting made in recent times, say within the last couple of years.
So if you see one, let me know. Don't hesitate to include lots of detail. Exactly when and where the sighting occurred. The estimated size of the snake. The direction of its travel, and its approximate speed. Did it seem to be chasing anything? Were there witnesses other than yourself?
Please don't try to fool me. You'll be wasting your effort. I know what a real hoop-snake sighting is like.
A few days after the last time I mentioned these interesting reptiles, I received a report about a hoop snake 12 feet long that had a luminous stinger on the end of its tail and it went around stinging cattle and trees and killing them.
Come on, if we're to unravel this mystery, we must deal with real hoop snakes, not imaginary ones. I am holding out for a photograph of a hoop snake.
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