1st Diamondbacks of the new year

[DUMBDOG]

Yes, you are correct, the term is garter snake, a lot of people up there call them garden snakes. Attached is a picture of the viscous beast.

 

[dmccarty]

AMEN!

Once many years ago when I was a kid, my grandparents had a house in Florida that was on a lake. It was a paradise for my cousin and I. We where in the water or on the water every day during the summer. There where a few lots that where emply including one next to my grandparents...

One morning we got up and it was time to go swimming. I ran out the porch door, down the sidewalk, and was about to step on the lower step when I noticed a BIG, and I do mean BIG copper head basking on the concrete. I had enough speed to jump over that snake and into the yard. I yelled at my Cuz to grab a pellet rifle so we could kill the snake. By the time he got out to me the snake had crawled into the crawlspace under the porch where we kept our inflatable boats, fishing rods, toys, etc. We went in as far as we had light but no farther! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

We WAS very careful that summer pulling stuff out from under the porch! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

If I had stepped on that snake I would have been bit bad. Not sure I would have lived through the bite. It was a BIG snake.

But you know snakes really don't bother me. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Our land should have lots of copper heads but I have only seen two. My dad killed one of the two. We have LOTS of black snakes. And one of them is a good 5-6 feet long. We have rocks, downed trees, and brush piles but I have seen danged few copper heads...

Later,
Dan

 

[notamustang]

I have walked out my front door barefoot and stepped on a Western Diamondback. I think I was more freaked out than the snake /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif. I would rather deal with a large snake over a baby any day. The two pacifics that almost killed the one dog were both babies. Not more than three weeks old.
Big snakes have venom control and they know that the first strike for something the size of a person will usually get that pest out of their hair. (So to speak) Now this is not saying that a 6' rattler is not going to shoot every drop of venom into you but at least you have a better chance. You still will have to get treated, and probably still need anti venom from a "dry" bite just because it is like saliva.
And yes they are all over, in parking lots, on trails just off trails and they do not always rattle. The younger ones will and if I mess with an a adult they will but generaly they are real quite. No need drawing attention to yourself when your 2" tall. Kinda errie to hear a snake with 8-10 rattles going off.

 

[SPIKER]

I second the OHIO black snakles chasing ya and will add the BLUE RACERS chasing ya. My sister lived by a RR tracts with drainage ditches which held water year round, she had them by dozens, needless to say I grew up not afraid of snakes and were just some other sort of critter to catch and mess around with. of the list of pets we had snakes were sort of normal and we often caught gartner snakes and brought them up to the house/garden to let free to control mouse populations. also I think at age 5 or 6 I had a black snake (water moccoson) caught bringing it up just to FREAK out my sister who hated snakes. once i let it go mom got mad and wacked it with a hoe taking it's head off and then proceded to use the other end on me! lol. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif best was she (my sister) came running from the garden by the tracks/burn pile with a good 6'+ blue racer dead on he heals she was a screaming at the top of her lungs and mom didn't have her HOE handy for that one. hahaha.

one other time sis freaked out pretty good was we (my brother and I) had caught a full grown ground hog and had a collar and leash on it. we kept that as a pet most of the summer @ her place then it was just gone one day, collar was taken loose and it was not seen againe. not sure if someone took it or it simply got off it's chain while we had it tied in the front yard. I rescued 2 baby coons and kept them for about 3 yrs before they ran off and we had squirls we hand fed living wild and were frendlier than a few of the cats lol. one cat we had would chase/catch & usually kill just about anything that she felt like. one day a stray german sheppard came into the yard and proceeded to growl and ack like it was gonna bite mef when that dam cat jumpped off the 2nd floor porch onto that dogs head! never saw that dog again after it was hi tailing it out of the yard with that cat stuck to it's head scratching & clawing & chewing away. the cat jumped off just the other side of the yard & that dog didn't slow down even after it was out of site! needless to say I gave the cat a treat of blogna that day. she later came up missing and I found her shot by some @$$. was one good cat... /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif she even played with those pet squirls compeating for peanutbutter covered crackers while my bro and I dangled our legs of the 2nd floor porch. We even caught a bunch of pigons out of the local feed/equity co. took em home (about 1 mile by air for them) kept them in a pen for a few weeks feeding them and playing with em. eventually they were frendly enough to handle and let fly loose all day while we were at school/working and cage em up at night to keep em safe. made roosts and everything in a small kennel type enclosure. and to think now adays we would have been breaking some 100 laws a month lol my how times have a changed... growing up by the age of 9 I was mowing yards and shoveling snow for 10~20 people/homes in town. I kept 1.2 the money and rest went to mom for food & what not, now adays you can'e even get a kid of 19 to mow the lawn or wash the dishes and they expect to be given $ for alowances and stuff. my womans kids are spolet rotten and are just as bad as the rest one turned in her mom to the cops said she hit her, (which my woman said didn't happen and I belive her as she does not belive in even spankings) good grief anyhow that cost her probation lost the kid to her dad (who btw lets her shack up with her boyfriend even though she is only 17) and has screwed up her life pretty good already. he just doesn't want to pay any more child support (so for last year courts have not made ihm pay anything even though he makes 60K+ per yr and now I'm having to support his kid...) good grief I got on a tangent lol

/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Mark M

 

[Toledo4Bass]

We live on a lake and have had quite a problem with cottonmouths. We moved into a house that was vacant for about a year, so there was no one to "thin" them out.
A friend suggested that we get a cat to get rid of the snakes. I really didn't figure it would work but it does. The cat will kill the small snakes before they have a chance to grow into large snakes. Our snake problem is under control and I have a new respect for cats. I had never had a cat in my life, didn't even like them, BUT, I'm a cat kinda person now.
Give em a try, it'll take a full season to see the results. My cat can pick up a "cottonmouth scent" and hunt them down. If the snake is too big, he will hold it at bay till I can apply the "410", the cat doesn't even run when I shoot. I figured he would be gone the first time I fired the shootgun, but he is right there, till the death!!

 

[HuckBB62]

notamustang, where abouts do you live (not exactly) My wife's worried sick about snakes!

 

[Partsman2]

I have lived in southern Ohio all my life and have come along a lot of black snakes but have never seen one chase anybody. I've heard of the blue racer doing this but have never seen one.

What I call rat snakes, I think is the same thing as a pine snake, are pretty brazen. They are hard to scare off and will actually come right back if you try to relocate them somewhere away from your house. I have had 2 or 3 around at a time. We even named them. They are tough on the small critter population and I try to keep them around. My wife freaks out and insists that I kill them whenever she sees one. They are really quick and usually get away from me /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif.

What I try to tell her is that snakes only come around if there is food. If you have non-poisenous snakes around who eat the food then the poisenous snakes (copperheads and rattle snakes) won't have anything to eat and won't stay around. It doesn't work though. She doesn't care, a snake is a snake and the only good one is a dead one. /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

 

[goodoleboy]

Sorry to hear about your dog. I had a dog that ran up about $2500 worth of bills after being hit by a car. After that incident i will no longer try to "save" a dog.
To much pain to see them in agony like my last lab.Who eventually ended up getting so bad i finally had to have her put down.

 

[froggy]

Of the two, the Southern Pacific has the more potent venom.

 

[Cabinholler]

If you have copperhead snakes and rattle snakes on your farm, the best way to thin them out is having livestock, and hogs on your farm. Hogs is the best of the two to have. Hogs will grab and shake a snake to death, and then eat it. My dad once had a field that was loaded with copperhead snakes, and he made a hog fence around it, and put several hogs in that field. After the hogs were in that field for a while, there were no copperhead snakes to be found.

One thing else about copperhead snakes that we have to watch out about here in Kentucky is that they will not scare easy. Most snakes will take off when a person gets around them. Copperhead snakes will not scare easy. They will just lay there and wait for you to step on them, and then bit you. When I was a small child, I was helping my dad make a tobacco bed on our farm in the month of March, and all at once I looked down and there was real large copperhead snake coiled and ready to strike. I screamed, and my dad came and killed it with a large piece of wood. The reason that the snake didn't bit me is that it is still cool here in Kentucky in March. If it had been later in the summer, the snake would have bitten me.

Copperhead snakes in Kentucky will also change colors like frogs do in the grass and weeds that they are laying in. If you kill a snake in Kentucky, and don't know for sure if it is a copperhead or not. Check to see what kind of tail it has. Every copperhead snake that I have ever seen on my farm had a blunt tail.

I grew up on a farm, and was never bitten by a copperhead snake. My dad always taught me to watch out for copperheads. The best place to find a copperhead snake in Kentucky is around old rotten wood piles, or around a lot of piled up rocks. When it gets hot in the summer, copperheads will try to find cool places to lay.

Another place that I had to really watch out for copperhead snakes was in out tobacco barn. We always stacked our tobacco sticks in the barn. In August when we got the tobacco sticks out of the barn for cutting the tobacco, a lot of the times we would find a copperhead snake in the tobacco stick pile.

The scary thing about finding a copperhead snake is that most of the time they travel in pairs. If you find one and kill it, look for its mate, because it could be near.

We also have black snakes in Kentucky. I will never kill a black snake when I find one, because they will kill every copperhead and rattle snake that is around them. When I am out on the farm and find a black snake, I know there aren't any copperheads and rattle snakes around. Although, there are very few rattle snakes been found on my farm, or near it in years.

The best way to keep from getting bitten by a snake on your farm is to wear very heavy tall logger, or lineman boots with snake chaps on. This isn't 100% proof that you will not get bitten by a snake by wearing heavy tall boots with snake chaps on, but snakes most of the time when they bit you will bit below the knee. If you have snake chaps on over your heavy boots, they will protect you above the knees. I have been told that turtle skin snake chaps are the best to wear because they are lighter than other snake chaps, and that they protect the legs real good. I don't know if that is true or not, because I don't own any turtle skin snake chaps, but I am thinking about buying a pair.

Cabinholler