I started to post this in Best Practices.

Man nearly dies after kissing rattlesnake to show off

A US man who kissed his new rattlesnake to show off for friends was bitten on the lip and nearly died.

Matt George, 21, of Yacolt, Washington state, is now recovering after he was rushed to hospital in critical condition.

He was showing friends the 60 centimetre snake he had caught on a recent trip to Arizona when he kissed it.

His friend, Jim Roban, recalled: "I said: "OK, man, you're being stupid. Put it away". He said: "It's OK. I do it all the time."

But when he kissed the snake again, it bit him under his moustache. He dropped the snake on the kitchen floor, and Mr Roban killed it with his cowboy boot.

As they waited for an ambulance to arrive at George's home, his face began to swell.

"He said: "'I'm going to die"," Mr Roban said. "I said: "No, you're not going to die. Just calm down and relax."

Mr George was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Portland, Oregon, where his condition is now improving.

I actually read that this morning and nearly wet my cubicle!! That goes right up there with the moron Dr. Patersen told us about at the Snake meeting. You know the one about the guy who would take his pet copperhead out of it's cage and wrap it around his neck while he watched TV. It takes all kinds.
I was pleased to see that he did not live in Georgia. Though he may have moved from here.

Darwin Award

You know, the awards for those people who improve the gene pool by removing themselves from it.

To Bad he lived. It makes him ineligible.

(June 2002, Georgia) An EMT in southern Georgia was part of the unit that responded to a call from Coffee County late one night. They arrived on the scene and found a severely injured man lying at the edge of a field. His stomach had been completely torn open, and he was covered with lacerations and bruises. He also had a prominent tire tread across his chest.
The injured man's companion showed up in a racing model ATV vehicle, clearly intoxicated, and gave the following account. Imagine this tale being recited in a deep Georgian accent.

He and his injured friend had been drinkin' and ridin' around the field on the three-wheeled ATV, when they sighted a stand of deer in their headlights. The friend, riding the back as a passenger, was struck with a great idea. "Hey man," he said, "If you quarter off one a those deer, betcha I can bulldog 'im." The driver thought this was an entertaining idea, so he proceeded to isolate a buck and race him down.

His intoxicated passenger proceeded to leap from the ATV, grab the buck by the antlers, and perform an excellent example of this rodeo sport. He pinned the animal's head to the ground, but that's when things went wrong. The buck, less docile than a steer, simply got up, threw his head back, and tore his assailant's belly open. The deer then proceeded to stomp, kick, and butt him for good measure.

The EMTs noticed that this information accounted all of the injuries except one. When they asked the driver about the tire track across his injured friend's chest, he responded: "Well how else was I s'posed to git the deer off 'im?"

I don't know which is worse: a drunk moron trying wrestle a grown male deer like a steer, or a drunk moron who runs over his injured friend to scare away the righteously angered animal.

quote:

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Originally posted by Slayerette:
To Bad he lived. It makes him ineligible.

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Sometimes they have honorable mentions.

How about the crook that tried to rob a convenience store three times in one day? When he left the second time he declared he would be back for a third time. Sure enough he returned and was arrested by the police that were investigating the second robbery.

They just have to remove themselves from the gene pool. As this winner told in his own words.

When I was seventeen, I pruned the future of my own family tree.
(2002) Some friends and I had heard that you can make a plastic two-liter bottle explode by using dry ice and water to create pressure inside the capped bottle. We gathered up as many plastic soda bottles as we could, obtained dry ice from the icehouse, and planned targets for this particular brand of mayhem.

After the first "dry ice bomb" had gone off, we were left disappointed with the length of time it took to actually blow. Our first idea was to use a smaller bottle, but a one-liter bottle only created a weaker, but still painfully delayed, explosion. The second idea was to use warm water to drive a faster reaction with the dry ice. This created a more reasonable time for us to wait until the sweet satisfaction of being a successful teenage vandal came to fruition.

Now we became greedy. If warm water made it better, then hot water must make it even better still! Yours truly was the one to try it. I added ice, poured scalding hot water into the bottle, and capped the "bomb". I recall an immediate ringing in my ears, and blood, and plastic shards. The hospital was only a mile away, but it seemed like a light year.

At the hospital, I was rushed in and quickly assessed. Due to the way I had been cradling the bottle, my groin and thighs took most of the damage from plastic shrapnel. At the age of thirty, I have many scars to remind me of my teenage stupidity, but none as monumental as my pair of silicone testes!