A very
rare but very
dangerous snake which roams the
wild areas of the American West and the Midwest. Aside from its insanely
deadly poison (a single drop killed off the
passenger pigeon and carved the
Grand Canyon), the hoop snake is best known for its unusual method of
locomotion. The snake rolls itself into a
circle, grabs its
tail in its
mouth, and
rolls after its
prey, just like a
hula hoop rolling down a hill. When it really gets going, the hoop snake can travel almost
20 miles an hour this way, which is more than fast enough to catch a
human on foot.
Luckily, the hoop snake's
venom is
so poisonous that it can accidentally kill itself if it
bites down too hard on its tail. So the easiest way to
dispatch the hoop snake is to start shouting out as many bad
jokes and
puns as you can; when it starts
laughing, it will either let go of its tail and flop over all non-
hooplike, or it will bite itself and conveniently
expire.
There was some effort a few years ago to get the hoop snake put on the
Endangered Species list, but it kept biting the
biologists and
folklorists and
Congressmen who came to study it.