Snakes !

[Grebo]

OOh scary,  I was walking up to the w/shop door & just pressed the door opener ( up & over ) When at the exact same time I saw a thick black line balanced halfway up the side wall. Panic, stop the door !
Darn thing didn't stop quick enough & the thick black line slithered into the shop.  :o
The O/H was just moving the van so I called him over & we cornered it just inside the door.
Hmm, now what.
In all the years we have been here we have never (knowingly) had one this close to the house. I asked a neighbour & she rang the police local, apparently that is the normal proceedure, the copper turned up to tell us the 'viper squad' don't do weekends  ???
After some time unning & arring he decides he's going to shoot it !
Not our favoured option, the OH was trying to make up a noose.
Poor thing was dispatched, probably just after all the sparrows nesting above the doorway.

We are now on hiper snake alert, I can't keep the door closed all the time so am rigging up a barrier.
Oh, it was about 2m.

I can't imagine trying to work with that slithering about my feet.

Suzi

[Mojo]

What kind of snake is it ? Poisonous ?

I nearly stepped on a Corral snake ( poisonous ) last year in our woods. I put on my snake chaps and walk through the woods looking for rattlers. I want to keep them out of our yard because of the dogs. A buddy of mine just lost his Dachsund to a rattler a couple months ago.

Snakes do not bother me except for the water moccasin. That snake terrifies me. They are scared of nothing, will hold their ground and are very territorial. They will come after you and not retreat. They are most always near water, are on the ground, in the water or hanging on low lying branches of trees. They are a bad snake and the one snake Floridians fear the most.

Our Eastern Diamond back can get VERY big and they pack a wallop if they bite you. They have a great venom delivery system and typically deliver a big load of it when they bite you. You get bit by one and you better find a hospital real quick.

I do have a resident black snake living around the house. They are great to have around as they keep the rodent population down. I call him blackie. I have heard they also keep poisonous snakes away but do not know if this is true or not. :)

On the plus side this has been a good year for scorpions. I have seen very few of them around the house. last year they were every where. In the house, outside the house, in my shed, you name it.

Best of luck with your snake Suzi.

Chris

[Mike]

A few gears ago i was working on a boat on a dock up the peace river there was a water s ske that was climbing up onto the dick from yhe water i took s stick and flung him back into the river a ways. He swam back and. Limbed up again. This went in a few time  efore the owner a older lady  sme out with a machette and when it stuck its head out "wack".
One other time a black racer went into my open garage door and inder some tool ins dark corner. I could coak him out so i had to kill him before he went in the house.   And. Hris a friend neight lost s dog a whole back to a rattler. Left him outside. When he got gome they couldnt figure out what happened untill a vet said he was bit by s rattler in the eye.

[byhammerandhand]

 :o :o :o :o

A few gears ago i was working on a boat on a dock up the peace river there was a water s ske that was climbing up onto the dick

At my last house, I had a couple of beehives and a creek running through the back yard.   I was standing behind the hives, waiting to pop a muskrat that was tunneling into the shore line. When I hear a lot of noise.  I though, "My, the bees are particularly noisy today."

I looked down and saw a six-foot black rat snake slithering over my toes.   I liked them because the kept the rodents down.   My wife was afraid to go into my shed because they sometimes rested there.  She got traumatized by snakes while mowing next to a creek at her childhood home.    I could use a black rat snake now because I've been overrun with chipmunks.

[JuneC]

That's a seriously big snake, Suzi  :o  I'd be uncomfortable keeping the door open as well. 

Just 2 or 3 months ago I was challenged by a snake in our back yard while cutting the grass.  Pretty sure it was a water moccasin.  So one Saturday I was cutting the front lawn when I saw the tail end of a black snake slither under the side fence.  About 10 minutes later, as I pushed my mower through the gate I saw him writhing in the grass about 15 feet from the gate - right out in the open.  He was beating his tail and acting all weird.  I thought maybe I had injured it in the front yard with the mower.  So I started to approach and he opened his mouth and threatened.  Pure white mouth (cottonmouth = water moccasin).  I ran back to my mower, started it, headed towards it and he didn't retreat until I was almost on him.  He got away  :'( 

But, I did find a trap that actually works.  Put one of these in the front by the front steps where I'd seen a snake hanging out on multiple occasions and did catch a large black racer in about a week.  I heartily endorse these:
    http://www.snake-trap-repellent.com/index.html

June

[Grebo]

Thanks June, I just might get one of those.

Don't know what type it was, but the neighbour took some pictures  ::) so I might be able to tell when I get a copy  ;D.
Fairly sure it was a constrictor,  I have seen several ladder snakes when walking the dogs in the mornings. But this was bigger & darker in colour.

http://www.wildsideholidays.com/natural/reptiles-and-amphibians/314-ladder-snake-elaphe-rhinechis-scalaris-culebra-de-escalera-.html

We keep a clear garden for this very reason but one  of the neighbours is always a mess with fruit trees, piles of leaves & now a mass of grape vines, great eh, they are only here a couple of times in the year so we get stuck with the wasps & beasties. ( houses are very close together)
>:(

Suzi

[bobbin]

We're pretty much "a live and let live" kinda household.  We're OK with hives of paper wasps, snakes, spiders, the usual cavalcade of creepie-crawlies.  The biggest snake I've ever seen was a bit over 4' and it was a black snake who lived under the barn where my horse was stabled.  I saw him basking on one of the freakishly warm days that New Englanders get to enjoy in April and immediately understood why there was no rodent problem in the barn!  With the exception of an Eastern Timber Rattler (which has been persecuted and hunted to near extinction in s. New England), snakes here are non-venomous. 

A couple of weeks ago I saw a 3' Milk Snake sunning itself in the middle of the driveway in front of the barn.  I thought it was a fallen branch until I got closer to it, and I did manage to get a picture of it before it slithered off to safety in the stonewall.  They're often confused with Copperheads (venomous and not found in my area, too cold) and are subsequently killed because of it.  They're harmless and feed mostly on rodents, amphibians, and other small snakes.  I haven't seen him since, but we're on alert for him.

I'm not sure what I'd think if I saw a 6'er moving into my garage, Grebo.  Shiver me timbmers!

[gene]

I grew up catching snakes. I caught a water moccasin one time and a friends' dad started cussing and had me hold it over a work bench while he cut it's head off with a hatchet.

I caught a rattle snake with a double set of fangs.

I caught a garter snake that had a really big lump in it's body and when I put it down it coughed up a really big frog.

I canoed the Okefenokee Swamp one summer and I read everything I could about that place before I went. A trapper down there in the 1940's reported watching as two snakes slowly began to swallow a very large rat, one snake from the head of the rat and the other snake from the tale of the rat. As the snakes lips met in the middle, the larger snake opened it's mouth a bit larger and continued swallowing the smaller snake right along with the rat.

I recently finished a book titled Don't Sleep, There are Snakes. It's about a tribe in the Amazon jungle. One day they went out in their canoes and, with bow and arrows, killed an Anaconda snake that one of them had spotted in the river a ways upstream.. They do not eat snakes so the missionary who was with them did not know why they were doing this. Why would they risk their own lives, and his life, to kill a 15 to 20 foot snake? When they killed the snake and got it across their two canoes, they floated back down stream and layed the snake across the shore of the river in front of their huts. When the women would come down to the river to do what ever they do down by the river, they would see the snake and get scared. This would be very funny to the men who put the snake there. Ha ha ha!?!

gene

[sofadoc]

I grew up catching snakes.
I caught a rattle snake with a double set of fangs.

You know, you can get those fangs fixed at the dentist's office. But then, you'd have to find a more conventional way to catch rattle snakes. :D

[kodydog]

Saw this 4' snake twice today.

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/herpetology/fl-guide/masticophisfflagellum.htm

First time I ever saw a Coachwhip. I thought how unusual the head and neck is black and the mid-section is variegated but the tail is crosshatched. Beautiful as far as snakes go. And fast, it quickly slithered to a hiding place when it saw me.

[Grebo]

Bueatiful creatures, as long as they are not in my house  ;D

Suzi