Coral snake chased my friend on my property!

[davo727]

Thursday my friend jeff was working on at my place- 8.5 acres between Cleveland and Coldspring Tx. I was out of town and he told me what happened when I got back.

He had trimmed some trees over my driveway gate and then walked back into the property to continue some clearing we had started when he saw the red and yellow and black snake about 20 feet in front of him headed his way and he looked at it and figured it would stop and go back when it really saw him.

Well jeff said he was watching it continue straight for him and when the 3 foot long coral snake was about 12 feet away jeff said the heck with this and turned and ran towards his truck to get a shovel to take care of it.

Came back a minute later and couldnt find it anywhere so Jeff packed up his stuff and went home! There went my free labor! Darnit. He is knowledgeable and if he says it was a coral snake then it was.

Now I have to worry about this when I go up there to work on the place

And I do a web search and find out that the pharma companys quit making coral snake anti-venom. Great.

[Sigarms]

If you think you've seen one, just remember a traffic light.

If you see yellow then red in the color pattern, STOP.

[texasjohn]

Coral snake or king snake. Can be same colors, different sequence.

Here is the king snake identification information.

King snakes eat rattlesnakes. Their bands of red and black are adjacent.

Coral snakes, while venomous, do not have long fangs but must chew on a body part to inject venom. Small children are most vulnerable, sometimes picking up one and playing with it for a while before it starts chewing on a little finger.

Highest probability is that it was a king snake.

Too bad you lost your friendly free labor....I doubt that the snake even saw him.... given a chance, snakes will seek to avoid confrontation with a large animal/person because they know they are not prey. It's possible that snake was heading toward burrow to get away since it vanished.

[ToadHill]

Maybe you need to keep it as a trained guard snake.

[Storm56]

Three feet would be a pretty large coral snake. I agree with the previous posters that it was perhaps a king snake. They are quite easy to confuse.

[forgeblast]

give it to the guy who has rattlesnakes under his shipping container.

[jlsmith]

I agree with texasjohn, prob a king snake. just remember "red touch black friend of jack. red touch yellow will kill a fellow". good luck with snake thow.

[beenthere]

"chased" might be a bit misleading here.

"ran away from snake" might be more accurate.

This guy didn't stick around to identify which color was where. But a good story.

[LMTC]

Spent a lot of time many years ago with snakes, but never dealt with a coral. By all information I had they are shy and retiring...basically pretty non-aggressive. King snakes on the other hand can be extremely aggressive. Both will have red, yellow, black bands, but in different sequences. The rhyme I was taught was "red and yellow kill a fellow, red and black venom lack."

[sweettractors]

"chased" might be a bit misleading here.

"ran away from snake" might be more accurate.

This guy didn't stick around to identify which color was where. But a good story.

Snakes can chase. I had a Blue Racer chase me to the top of a fence post when I was 12 or 13. We were morel mushroom hunting. Ken Sweet