Banded Water snake or Moccasin?

[cavemanrich]

Hate is a dirty word in my vocabulary

 

[neo71665]

Go dump a new hundred dollars of fish fry in a pond and see how bad you hate snakes, turtles, and otters when you walk out there one morning and see the bank littered with scales and see fat bellied snakes sun bathing.

 

[RosemaryDuck]

Go dump a new hundred dollars of fish fry in a pond and see how bad you hate snakes, turtles, and otters when you walk out there one morning and see the bank littered with scales and see fat bellied snakes sun bathing.

We're destroying what little environment they have left to hunt in. So many animals are being pushed closer and closer to people because they have nowhere else to go. A pond is free food for a lot of animals, unfortunately.

I used to have Great blue herons come eat the (extremely expensive) koi from my pond many years ago. Not much you can do except cover it and shoo them away. It's not their fault.

 

[ColtHandorf]

We're destroying what little environment they have left to hunt in. So many animals are being pushed closer and closer to people because they have nowhere else to go. A pond is free food for a lot of animals, unfortunately.

This is soooo true. The mentality some people have resulting from an inflated sense of self is astounding when it comes to environmental issues. There’s much more that could be said on the subject, but you said it beautifully and non-offensively. Something I’m not sure I could have done.

I used to have Great blue herons come eat the (extremely expensive) koi from my pond many years ago. Not much you can do except cover it and shoo them away. It's not their fault.

There are some other neat tricks also. Black PVC sinks and allows koi to hide in. A friend that raised koi in Florida told me about this trick. Keep long orange balloons (like the ones you make animals out of) and weight them so they are anchored and just below the surface. The wind or current causes them to move ever so slightly. The herons will go after the balloons which pop and scare them.

*Edited to fix the typos in the last sentence. Not poo but pop and not starve, but scare. I'm so glad my phone thinks it knows more than I do.