“Yellow touches black you are okay jack; red touches yellow you’re a dead fellow.”

My friend, an avid hiker, says she uses this saying to tell the difference from a venomous and nonvenomous snake.  It is a way to correctly identify a coral snake (deadly) from a milk snake (harmless) she informed me.  While I know little about snakes, a quick internet search confirms her beliefs.  I am not sure exactly if this holds true for all types of snakes or only those encountered in the continental United States.  I now will carry this mnemonic with me for future camping and hiking trips.

While at first I though this was just a rhyming and sing-song phrase about snakes, I learned that this saying can be helpful and even life-saving when known and in the wild.