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– I’ll be at Sakuracon in Seattle this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Come find me at booth SP10! I’ll have all 3 hardcover Medusa books (while supplies last), my new 24 Hour Medusa book, Medusa plush pillows and hats, prints and more, plus copies of Combine and Asami Loves Korra!
And it only occurs to me now that I’ve never seen Modest climb a ladder. But we have seen her climb on and around Charles. Hm, I wonder if she can adapt a new method of climbing by wrapping herself around the rungs.
I spent some time starring at a slide at the park down the street last week and I’ve concluded that she’d have a hard time climbing it. It’s just teh wrong shape for her to easily wrap herself around and the rungs are too close together for her to get through.
Well, maybe if she could pull herself up with her arms… but that is a pretty difficult task.
If she’s muscular enough, she cound drag herself just with hands, like… not sure how it’s called, an exercise people do with an overhead ladder.
I’ve seen snakes do it by putting the tip of their tail through a small hold and using it the way a climber would use their hand to pull up the rest of the body. It would be an issue if she was 100% snake but has hands, that could possibly work. Of course being she’s so young and has never dealt with a ladder before, I could see why she’d fall.
It’s the sleeping bag. Makes it harder to wrap her tail around for climbing purposes.
all those suckers sleeping at night. they miss out on the best stuff
Awwww! Modest can’t slide. That’s really sad actually. 🙁
Ladders, even free swinging rope ladders are actually quite easy for snakes to climb… IF they can fit through the rundles, which in this case is simply not possible. She might have an easier time slithering up the slide end…
Snakes and Ladders eh?
Hmmm. Maybe she can slip part of her tail in between the rungs and use that to help push her up like a foot and leg?
That’s how snakes climb that kind of surface. They can be really agile about using their tails the way we’d use hands to grip things and get a stronghold to pull up the rest of their bodies. She’s young, though, so that’s probably part of it—as well as the sleeping bag hindering her as Gnrrrg mentioned above.
A snake would insert a bend between between two rungs, then push down on the bottom rung and rectilinear crawl trough the bend. When she starts to run out of body, she would make a second bend further up the ladder and transfer weight to that bend. However, Modest’s body appears to be too thick to fit a bend between the rungs.
Yeah. Of the two slides I looked at recently neither looked like a kid’s body could fit between the rungs. In fact, I’m guessing thats on purpose.
As Jake said, the slides likely wouldn’t allow such for the kids’ safety. What I’m meaning is more akin to a spring-like release where she uses the tail to help push her up while her arms hold the sides for balance and additional lift.
If if the rungs/branches are too narrow to loop their body in, snakes will use their tails as hands to grasp and pull up. They stretch out pretty far to do this, too. I had a couple corn snakes who would regularly use this tactic to get into really tight spots. Their tails were pretty strong. Modest is very young though and not entirely snake so it’s possible she hasn’t learned/figured out how to do this yet. It may also be harder to do for a more massive snake body her size given she’s more like a very large-yet-short (for her girth) boa/python.
I think she’ll need to figure out some snake tricks at some point.
yeah it would be like having to do a situp at every step. she’d have to thread the tip of her tail in then flex the entire length of the snake abs and spine to push herself up. IF she could manage it she could skip several steps at once but… if snakes could do that they could walk on their tailtip like the Richard Scarry worm. There is just no way. Only if she can support her whole body on her arms.
Get smart snake on this! Slither up the slid from the bottom of it, turn facing down and slide back down! How hard is that (says the non-snake who hasn’t been on a slide for 60 years!!).
She’s wearing a.. pants? skirt? not sure what you call a tail cover, but it would seriously impede her ability to slither. Of course shoes impede our ability to walk too but people still use those
Today she’s wearing a single leg overall.