How many of you have seen a snake in the last 30 days?

We see black snakes about once a week here, and copperheads the same or a bit more. When we hay we always end up with baled copperheads. The ones out in the pasture are big, the ones up in the yard are usually very small.

__________________
http://tinksquared.com

We bought this place last August, and have only seen two snakes since then! The last one was about three weeks ago. I had a big, beautiful, black racer get driven through the middle of my garden party by some very angry mockingbirds. Thank goodness my party consisted of Biologists and their spouses...everyone was trying to ID it!. Then it headed toward my chicken house. We tried to catch it and move it, but it lived up to it's name! I haven't lost any chicks or eggs, though.

The first one found here was more fun...at least for me!

It was dove season a month after we moved in. I'd told my son to be careful of snakes, especially around the outbuildings. They are custom made for copperhead habitat (or were).

I was chopping brush in the front yard when my son came home from school, and proceeded to get some doves for dinner. He ran out of ammo, and remembered that his dad had put a box in the barn. A few minutes later, he came back where I was, with his face white and a sheepish grin on his face, holding a snake. He had stuck his hand in a box in the barn without looking, and been snake bit. Now, we're always kept snakes as pets, so he's quite familiar with them, and is good on ID, but being bit by a snake you didn't see can make you need to change your pants! He found something to flip that box back open so he could see the snake, and brought me one of the most beautiful corn snakes I've ever seen. Hopefully, it's still out there doing it's job! And he learned not to put his hands where he can't see!

Meg

__________________
All life requires death to support itself. The key is to have an abiding respect for the deaths that support you. --- Mark T. Sullivan

Seen one last Sunday. Cleaning out tall grass by some flowers and there he sat sunning himself. Black with a green stripe --probably 3' long. Ran for the shovel and as I was jabbing at him he slipped back in the tall grass. We see a couple a year.

special-k

Wow lots of snakes....fordy and torch you seem to be confused - I know it's not a copperhead, that was mentioned by shepmom in her response to my original post. We don't have copperheads in the desert southwest.

The funny thing about ID'ing this snake is I have now received, thru here and thru a reptile forum I found, many "possible" ID's. These are the possible id's so far: Sonoran gopher, glossy something or other, bull snake, fox snake, rat snake. I guess not many people really know snakes huh? I guess I'm surprised at this. I have looked at some pics of snakes on the 'net and truly this one type of gopher snake looked pretty close.

Well yesterday after posting this I went out to check what he was doing, he went into my doves' cage, they were flipping out, but he only wanted to drink their water. This huge snake inside this 2'x2' cage, drinking out of their little water bowl.

Told DH he has to go, but unless he's home to get him right when he's out forget it. Will be interesting....

Every time I wear sandals instead of boots, I see snakes.

STG.

In any case, around here, I've seen a small mess of baby rattlers (at least that's what they looked like), lots of black snakes, the ribbon snakes and some unidentifiable ones. I live close to a river and to a lake and, because of all the rain this year, there's even more snakes out. I've even seen them on the highway which I've never seen before.

I badly want to get baby guineas and chickens, but don't because of all the snakes. I haven't yet figured out how to snake-proof everything.

I also never go under trees here without first looking up to make sure there's no snakes up there waiting to drop on my head.

I agree that this must be the year of the snake. I think I've seen more this year than the last three years combined. In the last month I've killed two copperheads and a water mocassin. Sunday, I was walking into the tractor shed and saw the black head of a snake around the corner next to my trailer, about 30 ft. away. I approached for a better look, and he took off FAST. I would guess around 6 ft. long, slender and coal black but the last foot or two next to the tail was brown. I'm guessing a king snake but as fast as he was I don't know.

He He. I have a good story about that. My mom and dad came out from PA to WA to visit for two weeks. It was their first visit to my new place. My mom wanted to help paint the house. First I had to clear the thick bushes from the front flower bed. Then as she was painting the house there was a snake by the downspout. Now the only snakes we have here are tiny garter snakes - I've never seen one bigger than 18 inches. She did a big dance and I hearded the snake out to the meadow assuring her that it was the only snake in WA. That's when it found it's only buddy and they both slithered off together! :haha:

I am really glad they are the only snakes I have to deal with - they still make me jump a bit - just habit after lliving in rattlesnake and copperhead country I guess!

__________________
Visit my new blog: deberosahomestead.wordpress.com

Wow those snake stories are amazing! I live at almost 7 thousand feet so we dont have snakes (poor me , right). I did see a garter snake on my way to town down in the valley and it is the first snake i have seen in my 7 years here!

__________________
www.MontanaSticksAndStones.com at Goshen Farm

I have yet to see any snake this year. I remember back when I was a child, Grandpa proudly show me the tails of two rattlesnakes he had killed on the farm in his youth. I now live on grandpa’s farm and have never seen a rattlesnake…but I see plenty of mice. I kinda wish I had the snake problem instead of the mice.

We only have garter (Spelling??) Snakes here.. and there are a lot of them.
But do not mind, just have to watch were I step so I do not hurt them.

Is a wonderful change from where I have lived in the past. I sure do not miss poisonous snakes at all.

__________________
Shari

Seems most people are afraid to say they KILL snakes when they find them around the home ... I know some ( a lot here) do the right thing and let them go elsewhere but a lot, if not most just kill them if given the chance. I know I always have. I let them live now though for mice control. This is really tough though because my wife won't go near them and it's tough to get he to do chores when I'm not there to feed everything. We have large black snakes everywhere. Few of other species.

Through the power of the internet......

I just discovered that the long snake I saw at my place Sunday was an Eastern coachwhip (dark variety). Big and FAST snake!

Well a most wonderful update to report. I went to feed and water in the barn this morning and saw no snake. As DH went off for work, he commented that he's seen the stray cat by the barn and I JOKINGLY said maybe he'll eat the snake. I was kidding. I went in about an hour ago, and found this 7 or 8 inch section of dead snake, same type. Too big around to have been the little 12 incher I found last week. Had to have been the big snake. Lots of kitty pawprints in the area too. Nature is wonderful - the balance always seems to come if you leave it alone mostly (not that I would hesitate for one second to shoot a rattler) but you know what I mean.

Looked at your pics, wow, he's long!
Can't say I blame you on that. I don't know if you could bait him with a live trap or not. He's pretty!

I've seen at least 3 on the road lately, 2 dead and one living. I couldn't bring myself to run over the live one who was crossing the road, even though I think he may have been a copperhead and my husband would have harangued me for not getting rid of him.
I'm not fond of snakes, but if they're not in my space, I just can't seem to kill a living thing.

__________________
Vickie

Well, problem solved. Four of my cats are good about that too, since they're l outside country cats!

__________________
Vickie

I've come such a long way with regard to my hate of them. I'm like KincoraFarm - so scared of them. And then of course after moving here, the very first encounter I had was with a rattler. The first time I found one of these snakes, meaning this same type as the picture shows in a little outbuilding where my washer and dryer is, I couldn't do the laundry! So, even though he was gone later, I was so afraid he was under the washer or dryer so I stood back and threw the clothes in from about ten feet away through the main building door! How funny. Now I just have become aware of what type we have here, how to immediately tell if it's a rattler (head shape and of course the tail) and I know they're in the barn. We have what the locals call a red racer too, he's actually kind of cool. He's very long too, but not quite as big round as this big one was. He's very afraid of me though, even after three years, he'll leave right away. This big snake of the last two days had no fear of me at all which kind of freaked me out.

I'm soooo careful. When I'm outside I am in a contant state of looking for a snake. I mean even just walking, I'm doing a side to side sweep with my eyes. 99 percent of the time I've seen the snake because I was looking for it.

I couldn't get close enough to a snake to kill it. We would opt for relocating one in a heartbeat unless it's a rattler.

I actually keep hoes and rakes scattered around just for the purpose of fending off snakes.



Now I don't mind much if they're just hanging out or if they hightail it out of there when they see (or hear) me coming. But if I catch them eating frogs or birds or anything other than rodents, I'll whoop on them. I usually only scare them, although I did kill one last year --- I'd been helping a cardinal family with their little ones - even delayed pulling down an old shed until their babies had hatched.

One day, I went out there and Ma and Pa Cardinal were having a fit! I thought they were trying to keep me away from the shed, so i skirted it and went on about my business. But I couldn't resist peeking in on my way back, only to find A GIANT SNAKE CURLED ALL THE WAY AROUND THEIR NEST EATING THE LITTLE CARDINAL BABIES.

I whooped on that fellow with the nearest hoe and ended up cutting him in two.

The moral of the story is, don't mess with my birds, snakes! :yeeha:

Well, I'm not good with snake identification when their dark snakes. Two years ago I saw my 5 cats out by my bird feeder in the front all in a circle, tails twitching and such. So, I figure a bird is about to become a snack and go out to see what their up to.
Only it wasn't a bird, it was a big black snake all coiled up just waiting for one of them to lunge. So, I shoo'ed them off thinking it was a King snake. Went and got an old ice chest and a garden weeder and proceeded to try and pick him up with the weeder and place him in the chest.
Problem was he stayed rolled in a ball, so I'm rolling him like a crocket ball into the chest and plop the lid on him. I figured when Hubby got home he could tell me if he was a King Snake. I don't like to kill the pest control!
Hubby gets home, I push the chest top off, he looks down and takes a step back - Nope, not a King snake, I'd rolled a CopperHead into the chest! Needless to say, he wasn't too happy with me. Couldn't bring myself to kill it so, I took it and threw it in the ditch across the road. I don't think he was too happy with me!

__________________
Vickie

Walking along a cow path on the way to water the trees I almost stepped on a snake. The only reason I didn't is because I heard a hissing and looked down. It was a big bullsnake with it's head about a foot off the ground hissing at me. It looked like a rattler at first and I didn't know I could move that fast. Rotten snake better no scare me like that again. Husband shot a BIG rattle yesterday that decided to make it's home under one of the cow tanks. We have a BIG ratttlesnake den on our place about a mile and a half from the house. We see lots of snakes on the road.

We were hauling a couple of tons of gravel Monday to fill the holes in the road and got a free black snake with the second load. I just shoveled it off with the gravel and let it slither away. If it manages to get passed the guineas and dogs and live it is welcome to stay :haha: Just this morning I ran over a copperhead, good riddence. Blacks snakes are fine but copperheads are a whole other thing. :yeeha: