Snakes, The Good, The Bad, and the ugly

[Slamfire]

Ain't you moved to Lawrenceburg yet, who's gonna be my guide at the tractor pulls this summer?

We lived in rural CA while I worked in a hydro electric plant. One day there was a fresh hatched Pacific Rattler on the sidewalk at the base of the front steps. Cute little bugger, but the kids were all in the single digit age bracket, so I beaned him with a square point shovel. Beheaded him and gave the snake to the bravest kid. The head I launced into the tules along side the creek.
My youngest was just startin to crawl then and I knew I needed some help. About a week later I spotted a mountain king snake on the way home from work. They are colored like a safety rope and you can't miss 'em in the headlights. I picked him up and took him home. He stuck around most of the summer, livin in the dry laid rock at the bottom of the fence around the yard. I know he got a couple of garter snakes outa the creek, and we didn't see another rattler. I wouldn't mind havin' one around here but the wolf pack won't tolerate snakes, coyotes, etc., and they do a pretty good job of mousin', groundhoggin', grousin' and turkey clearin' too. /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

 

[jpr62902]

Yet another excellent thread on TBN. I don't know much about snakes, but at least now when I think I might run into one, I'm gonna be wearin' "Depends" and a great pair of runnin' shoes. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

 

[Chuck52]

A 2-3 foot black snake kept me company yesterday as I was putting some pepper plants in the garden. We had surprised each other earlier when I pulled back the section of fence I use as a gate and disturbed his sunning himself on some bricks. We both moved a little fast for a moment; for me, there's just something startling about the sound a snake makes in weeds. However, when we saw we weren't going to bother each other, we settled down to our respective work. I say "black" snake because that's his color. I see a few like that around the place, and assume they might be Blacksnakes, but I don't know much about herpetology. I do know that some local black-colored snakes can get huge. I was driving through town once and came up on a crowd of people looking at a black-colored snake that had apparently come up on the road from a nearby culvert. That thing was as big around as my thigh and looked to be several feet long. Fortunately for my peace of mind, the largest snake I've seen on my place was only a bit larger than my friend from yesterday.

Chuck

 

[LSmith]

Slamfire,

I'm diggin' as fast as I can! I'm tryin to get a basement dug in the hill overlooking two of my creeks. Went to professionals because I don't have a backhoe and several of the rocks they dug up makes my little 'bota look like a Tonka toy. God willin and the creeks don't rise we should be certified TN residents by this time next year. That is if I get the house built, the power company gets the lines in, I get the spring box dug & finished and oh yeah I work a regular job too, and maybe sleep every other tuesday night /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif It's a lot of work but worth it. Heck I was so busy out there Saturday I forgot about the lawnmower races in town. Well maybe next year.

See ya,

 

[heehaw]

i am fine with saying i kill every rattlesnake, copperhead and cottonmouth snake i can. i go out of my way to avoid killing most other snakes, almost as much as i go out of my way to kill those three: but the occasional black snake meets its doom when around me too. if you just figure how often a snake eats, the number or rodents he eliminates is nothing compared to the misery that can be dumped on a person with just one bite. plus i have had several occasions to cut the deceased open, to see what they had eaten..never found a rodent in a single snake. found frogs, baby birds, a squirrel, so i guess that was a rodent..but never a mouse or rat.
heehaw

 

[Lazy]

Hi
Found this by the barn this morning.

Charlie

 

[Lazy]

another pic

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Around here we'd be surprised to see a copperhead like that. Now fifty miles north.............

 

[Slamfire]

LSmith,
I think I know how you feel, I wake up every day to a new beginning, but by the end, I'm behind where I started.

Lazy,
That were a cute little feller, but I think I rather have a corn snake in my barn. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[SPIKER]

LOL at a couple of those posts:

yep I'm in the let them be camp, I used to catch them several at a time, usually gardners, but also black snakes( aWater mocosins) poisonus, blue racers, also poisnes as well as the copperheads and a few otehrs.

2 weeks back I chased out a ton of newly hatched gardners, probably tilled up a nest, I moved several and when I got off to move others I kept loosing sight of them they blended in TOO well for their own good cause I couldn't fiund them and just went back to tilling and probably got them.

my sister sued to really get poed cause we would catch 5'+ blue racers and let them go by her house... lol.

yep most garners don't eat mice, (untill they get really big) usually frogs, snales, grasshoppers, crickets, slugs ect. (on REAL TV they showed this gardner going after a slug it was really interesting watching him eat that slimmy thing! lol, afterwards that snake had a look like (YUCK why did i eat that slimmy thing!) lol

as for getting a bergibers scared out of you, I was stationed up @ Edward AFT CA in high desert. only there for 3 days and I already found about 50 black widows, 3 or 4 scorpions and a rattler all with in 50' of my doorm room door. I got a NEW room (best on on base as far as I am concerned it was last room on the farthest end ground floor so my view was of the wild life with cyotes road runners and the hole bit right out side the door.) when I was moving in I sat my little BBQ outside the door for the night after cooking and put out the hot coals. I sat the lid next to it half on & half off. the next morning (1st day after moving into my NEW room) i was cleaning out the built in dressers which some one had left a bunch of Sweaters in, I stopped went out to start the grill for lunch and picked up lid to reviel about 10 big scorpions fall out.! after t doing the boot scooting step I finished them off and went back to room cleaning. right after squashing the scorions I walked into the room and reached into the open drawer to grab the sweaters and a dam gecho jumped onto the back of my hand! made me scream like a girl I swear!
I almost ended up with those racing stripped undies too! anyhow I kept one of the black widows as a pet for the two years I was there and fed her crickets grasshoppers ect. she got REALLY fat and when I left I took her out nad let her go about 500 yards from the dorms in a nice clearing... I had to keep pulling the nest eggs out and getting rid of them but that spider was kept in a 1 gallon jug for 2 full years... I used to catch lots of them right at the door and bushes and such. usually moved them way out and off the paths. had to watch out for the shoes too. never SAW a brown recluse INSIDE but out in the bush yes. took several rattlers to one of the guys for mounting which was hit in the roads most people just kept running them over. he mounted and stuffed lots of critters.

Mark M, /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Mark M

 

[mitchdb]

I'm not real crazy about snakes. Someone mentioned earlier about not knowing snakes that well. I don't know that much about them either and I'm not willing to take the chance. Especially with little kids!

This one climbed up in the inside of my wheel on my truck. When I drove off, it had a few chunks taken out of it. I was told it was a rat snake!

I was standing on the back tire (the one that he was heading for) getting something out of my bed. I jumped backwards off the tire and heard a rustling sound behind me. I turned around and he was coiled up with his mouth open, I nearly came unglued.

 

[mitchdb]

pic2

 

[mitchdb]

pic3

 

[Junkman]

You might say that you scared him as much as he scared you. It appears to be a common rat snake that eats mice and other critters. They are beneficial to the environment and you should welcome him in your woods. He will keep the mouse population down. Even if it were a poisonous snake, you have a greater chance of being harmed, than harming it, if you should try to kill it. I believe that a hasty retreat is the best course of action when faced with the unknown. Only when there is no choice to retreat, would deadly force be reasonable in my opinion. As I have stated, the snake wants to avoid you as much as you want to avoid it. Apparently you were not that intimidated by it, because you stayed around to take pictures.

 

[Treed_in_TX]

My wife and I were living on a 1500 acre ranch in Texas a few years ago. She was carrying a foldup table fromt the porch around to the garage to put it away when she felt something thump her shoe hard. She looked down to see a 4 foot rattlesnake coiled up in the grass next to the sidewalk. Well she's not the kind to just take something like that so she ran to the garage, picked up a shovel and pinned that snake to the ground. She did a fair amount of damage to it by the time I got home from work 20 minutes later. I killed it with a ball peen hammer. We then skinned it and keep the skin on the wall in the guest room. People don't over stay their welcome. Anyway, the snakes rattle was missing. It only had a plasticy nub at the end of its tail and it could not make any noise. It was very lucky Kristi had shoes on that day since she went barefoot much of the time. Part of this was my fault in that I had let the grass grow too high. I kept it much shorter after that.

The other incident with a rattler was coming home from grocery shopping one day there was a good size rattler next to the kitchen door. Our stupid cats were having a good time batting at its tail and springing out of the way when the snake struck. We didn't lose a cat that day but we probably should have. I went and got my 12 ft pruning saw with the telescoping pole and moved the snake a few hundred feet from the house before releasing it. It was none too happy about my handling it but we both survived with no physical scars.

 

[polecat]

personally ..if there r kids around then ALL the poisonous snakes go!!!!!!!have no fear of snakes and have seen and decapitated a few 5' rattlers in alabama near the barns but if it's him/me or aloved one ..yer gonna lose!!!! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[mitchdb]

personally ..if there r kids around then ALL the poisonous snakes go!!!!!!!

I AGREE! All poisonous snakes must go, even some of the non poisonous just for the fact that they are a snake.

My thought: Until I become a snake expert ( I don't see that happening though), all snakes are dangerous!

 

[txdon]

The snakes are in their mating season now and they are about. Here's one that stopped by this weekend. a yellow bellied racer, nonpoisonous, still alive. He posed perfectly still for about five minutes.

 

[txdon]

Zoom helps to identify the snake.

 

[1bush2hog]

Since purchasing 75 acres last summer, I had not seen any snakes other than non-poisonous, even though I was aware of the potential for others on the property.

Well, I was bush-hogging on Sat. and happened to look down and see a 4ft rattler stretched out and crawling in a previously mowed area, about 6ft away from the tractor.

20 years ago, killing it would have been my first thought, but instead I stopped to run over and grab my camera which was about 30 yards away /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif. I ran back over with camera in hand and out of breath, only to find my subject had disappeared.

Talk about a weird feeling /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif...I quickly glanced around my feet and poof I was back in my tractor seat with one serious leap /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif. Didn't know I could still move like that.

I love all creatures from the right distance!