truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

A young copperhead snake trespassed into a building near Poolesville, Md., in June and delivered several venomous nips to the hand of Sam Pettengill. Often snakes do not survive such encounters because the victim's first impulse is to kill the attacker. Fortunately for this snake, it had wandered into a Buddhist temple, and Pettengill had an obligation, according to a Washington Post report. Before he set out for the hospital for treatment (which turned out to be four antivenin cycles), Pettengill took the snake in his throbbing, increasingly pain-wracked hand, circled a prayer room three times to bless it, and released it back into the woods.

David Cerullo came to prominence after purchasing the television studios abandoned by Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and established what is perhaps the boldest of all Christian "prosperity gospel" ministries (that pays him an annual base salary of $1.52 million). With his father, semi-retired Pentecostal preacher Morris Cerullo, they assure followers that the more they give, the more God will return to them. In a recent TV spot, Morris, speaking first in tongues and then addressing the currently credit-challenged: "When you (donate), the windows of heaven ... open for you ... 100 fold." "Debt cancellation!" (The on-screen message: "Call now with your $900 offering and receive God's debt cancellation!")

The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Prayer order in La Crosse, Wis., is now in its 131st consecutive year of around-the-clock prayer, in shifts, at its Adoration Chapel. The Sisters' ritual is based on an 1865 promise by the order's superior that if God graced their ministries with success, they would build a chapel and pray non-stop.

Ms. Dyker Neyland is one of the few parents who have successfully challenged a school board's restrictive student dress code for adolescents. Neyland persuaded the board in Irving, Texas, this spring that devout religious modesty (as prescribed in the Bible by 1 Timothy 2:9) should take precedence over the district's no-untucked-shirttails rule, in that the extended shirttail provides additional cover for her 7-year-old daughter's backside.

Terrorism Gets Pizzazz: A physical fitness video, purportedly made in April by a U.S.-based al-Qaida operative, gives workout tips to jihadists, urging that they "train as hard as possible" to inflict maximum damage on "the enemies of Allah," according to an ABC News report. Exercises such as crawling long distances on hands and knees are demonstrated by people in flowing robes. The narrator discourages using gyms and fitness centers because of the "un-Islamic" music and "semi-naked" women. And a video released in May, purportedly from al-Qaida in Somalia, features an English-speaking rap singer making a recruitment pitch to U.S. and European youth, including such verses as: "Mortar by mortar / Shell by shell / Only going to stop / When I send them to hell."

Ms. Nour Hadad, 26, was arrested in Orland Park, Ill., in April and charged with (and, according to police, confessed to) beating her 2-year-old niece to death while baby-sitting, and, as usual, police publicly released her booking photograph. However, Hadad's husband, Alaeddin, immediately complained that her photo, without her head scarf, was an "insult" to Islam. Said a Muslim activist, "They should respect the modesty of the accused."