Obsessed with Snakes in the Coop -- want pics!

[Me & Jack]

Kind of like seeing a train wreck, I want to hear and see all of the snake stories and photos you have. For some reason, I just can't get over this bizarre curiosity about the one animal in this world I can't help but hate. So far in the yard this past seven months we've had two rat snakes, one king snake, a garden snake, a red-bellied water snake at the pond, a green grass snake, and an eastern brown snake that lunged at me when I unknowingly stepped near it. Our neighbors' dog was bit by a copperhead it encountered in the woods between out two properties -- the very woods I hike through with my goats and dogs (and one silly cat that always wants to come for a walk with us). Also have had a black racer aggressively go after my goats while they were foraging around the pond. The goats did not seem overly phased, but every hair on the back of my neck stood on end watching this snake slither after and thrust its gaping mouth towards the legs and faces of my goats. Serious willies! Sometimes I think I can hear them slithering through the dry grass in my pasture near the pond. I walk back to the barn like some kind of high-stepping Saddlebred horse!

 

[CochinBrahmaLover]

If you don't want snakes get some guinea hens

 

[Jobele]

This year has been a very bad year for snakes in Texas because of the drought conditions! A friend of mine has killed over 60 rattlesnakes that chose her property to breed on. She found them everywhere....including her coops. I personally can't stand any kind of snake and I agree that Guineas will help control the snake population!

 

[urban escapee]

Most of our property is wooded so snakes are a big problem, but only when they get too close, I almost stepped on a copperhead the other night, my husband shot it for me

 

[Milk Glass Chicky]

I don't like snakes, with the exception of little garter and green snakes. It's great they can keep the rat/mice population down, and for blake snakes to go after copperheads and such. Though it seems to me they go after birds, eggs in the birds' nest and chicken eggs more than anything, from the incidents I, my mother and grandmother have unfortunately witnessed.

Then...there's the stories about black snakes actually killing a chicken or duck just attempting to eat them (often while setting), as I've seen fortunately not very often on this board and others, but still occurring just the same. Yeah, people say they can't "eat" a chicken or duck, even a bantam type one. but what difference does it make when they constrict them to death while trying to eat them?

I think I'd hurl my guts out if I came upon a scene like that, that's a big fear of mine. There's some grisly killings that other predators are capable of, but something about what a snake can do just gives me the ultimate creeps!

I'm just glad I don't live in Florida with the pythons and anacondas (I live in upstate South Carolina), and other places with far more poisonous snakes. About the only poisonous snake I've seen in my yard has been copperheads. I just hope the cottonmouths don't work their way up from the creek should times ever get bad enough in the warm months.

 

[nwfl]

well, you wanted pictures, so here are three from end of march 2011. i had a rat problem during the winter and got carried away killing them. when the snakes came out of hibernation there weren't enough rodents to eat and they hung out in the hen house for a couple weeks stealing eggs and making the girls uncomfortable. we relocated 5 rat and 2 pine snakes 35 miles south. these two individuals were a nuisance. we caught them on different days and relocated them a mile from the house then caught them both again! took them at same time mile and half north on other side of interstate. they came back and i found them together the next afternoon making snake love under the roosts in the shavings. they went south the next morning. we have plenty more though - coachwhips, rattlers of all sizes, black rat, indigo, even some little coral snakes .

well shoot, hang on for pics in next post. darned phone got glitchy

 

[nwfl]

Sheesh, there you go.

 

[CochinBrahmaLover]

Awesome I Love Snakes!!

 

[Tricorn]

This one was stealing eggs for a while. Caught him when he ate a ceramic egg by mistake.

 

[ramirezframing]

dont kill the king snakes (black with white bands) they eat other snakes