snake

[lolac68]

My silkies were behind 1" square hardware cloth. When I opened the coop to let them out, there laid a snake with a silkie in it's tummy. I grew up with pet snakes, and don't mind having them around at all, but my protective instincts kicked in and I was rather unhappy. I hate killing any living thing, but that snake didn't get a chance at eating a second course. I know that the snake was just doing what is instinctive to it, but so was I. I was protecting my babies. I just couldn't believe the thing got in through that tiny wire.

 

[Southern28Chick]

Quote:
Do you have your hardware cloth buried at all? I have chicken wire over my chain link fence and a stupid snake got to one of my babies too. I was thinking about hardware cloth, that' why I'm asking about yours. I would bury mine about a foot.

 

[CarriBrown]

Catch him (either with your hands or a stick with a "Y" at the end... something to get him by the neck) and put him in a pillowcase. You can call animal control or release him someplace else. He's just doing what he needs to do to get food.
I just use a stick to pin their neck and catch them with my hands (but get me near a spider and I scream like I'm staring death in the face) and release them in the riverbed behind my house.

 

[Chelly]

Love your pic's Ivan3

I grew up with snakes as pets, I like em! I have relocated three in the last month or so - just moved them out of harms way (one in a garage - bull snake, made a HECK of a noise!) one from my drive way, a gopher, and a tiny little ring neck snake at my work had gotten into a planter some how!

 

[suburbanhomesteader]

I love snakes! They are so beautiful and efficient!

Love the photos!

When we were little, my brother and I had a snake removal business we called Fang Finders. For $1 a snake, we would remove any snake and relocate it without harming it.

This spring, in the high grass of my fencerow, I found what I think was a very large Texas Rat Snake (hard to get a good look at him without disturbing him) about to eat a young rabbit. It was an amazing sight!

Edited: originally typed "Texas Rate Snake", but that is a species also known as TXU Electric....LOL!

 

[mudhen]

 

[ivan3]

Chelly, I grew up in San Berdoo and Riverside - my ma kept a couple of Horned Toads that got to be about as big as coffee saucers. Had three California King Snakes that we released up in the Cajon Pass.

SuburbanHomesteader, thanx for posting that excellent shot - it just screams half-inch hardware cloth. We put our chooks out when they were big enough to roost and I had put a baby monitor in the coop. If I thought any of our slithery property mates were a threat - I'd have some new hat bands. But the chooks act like beaters on safari, i.e., when I see them circled up and growling it's time to go save a snake. The turkey hens are more like I'd expect Velociraptors to act when they find one, making little predator trills interspersed with `I've found something yummy whoots, necks stretched out, tag teaming the snake.

The one time the chooks ran into a big snake (Eastern Water snake) they just gave it wide berth and the roo led the hens away from the pond.

My favorites here are the Scaley Green Tree snakes (we think of them as being itinerant ornamentals when we find them in the Lavender Hysop), the girls do not get to translate these guys into strands of spaghetti.

James Dickey wrote a couple of lines, in the book Deliverance, about watching a snake cross the bank of a river and then go into the water without pausing or changing its motion "a being with a single spell and no barriers."

Keep those chooks safe!

John

 

[Chelly]

This is the Bull snake I found when we were in Nebraska last week. He was in the garage and I moved him into the long grass - he made a HECK of a noise!

This is the Gopher that was in my driveway - eating a baby bird. (there were two baby birds, I put the other back in the nest)

 

[Chelly]

I grew up in Africa, so my choice of pet snake was a little different, we had what we called HOUSE snakes, and Red lipped heralds.... for the most part.

Now and again we found posionous snakes, we never KEPT those (my parents would have had a fit!) Puff adders and Night adders (slightly poisonous, can kill a small person)
Green and Black Mamba's - we never saw many of those!

 

[Phyrst]

Wow! Nice pictures posted. I love this forum!