Ooh yeh, nice adder. You can eat them if you cut off the head and a few inches of neck. The venom glands are behind the head. The skins make a decorative hatband or get two and hang them either side of your shamanic fur hat with horns, decorate the ends with tassels of feathers and beads.
I've found adders of all sorts of colours, from black to ash-white to charcoal grey, brown, pale sand-coloured and even vivid red. That one looks quite languid snoozing in the bath but if you find one doing a side-winder kind of movement but not actually going anywhere, it is probably guarding a nest with eggs or young and will be aggressive. best keep well clear of it. The bite can cause renal failure, rheumatic heart disease, cardiac arrhythmias and nerve damage resulting in Parkinson's Disease type symptoms. Lots of people will claim that they are harmless, they are not. You might not die, but there is a whole world of unpleasantness between being alive and well, and being dead.
*p.s. I liked J.P. Donleavey's idea of livening up the people of Ireland by releasing loads of deadly venomous reptiles into the Irish countryside...
![Glen Lui Adder August 08 006c.JPG]()
- Aggressive Adder, Glen Derry, Cairngorms
