The Black Snake

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The hair is standing on the back of my neck and my skin is crawling!

Any snake moving AWAY from the hen house or I gets to live.
BUT..Summer before last, I went down to check a broody and reach under her to pick her up...i hit what felt like a piece of frozen lead pipe.
I knew what it was...I saw it go over the back of the nest box!
I left the flash light burning and brought myself to the house AFAP!
The next morning, the light was still burning and I was short 3 bantam eggs under the hen!
 
Where do you live that you have westerns and pygmys ? To the best of my knowledge, one is an east coast snake and the other a south western.
 
Now, THAT'S a nice rattler. How many people did he feed???LOL. Where are you from? Sounds like southeastern NC. I have black snakes, racers, kings, and copperheads. I let the first 3 live as long as they don't get in the hen house. They also kill copperheads, among other snakes. The copperheads need to stay out of my yard, or they die. My chickens eat the baby snakes if they find them. Oh, and I love your way of telling a story.
 
the following is a rant. Please take it as such. It is not a well thought out personal attack on anyone here.

Sorry guys but the old saying "the only good snake is a dead snake" is so last century and ignorant IMO. You will put up with an animal (the rat) that harbors disease, will prey on chicks and eggs, and breeds young (what are called K species by ecologists), but you will kill a slow to reproduce species whose MAIN food is vermin why? Because they are portrated as the devil in the bible? Because thats what your father always did with snakes? Because they gross you out? I might be able to understand it with poisonous snakes, but rat snakes....come on. Find the hole it's using to get in and patch it.

PS Feral cats probably do more to reduce the native songbird population than all the snake species combined, but we put out milk for them.

disclaimer: Mooman is a life long naturalist with a deep respect for the native cold blooded fauna of the world and very little regard for invasive introduced species.
 
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In this Ouachita Mountain area the Timber Rattlers and Diamond back territories overlap. We are on the edge of the Diamond back territory and see more Timber Rattlers (called velvet tails sometimes because of the black, fuzzy velvet like surface of the tail). The Pygmy Rattlers (thats what local folks and I call them) is similar in coloration to the Copperhead, but duller in coloration and usually pretty short, 18" -22", and stocky.

I've never been bitten but know people that have. I work with a fellow that was bitten by a Cotton mouth Moccasin, nasty experience he had, with complications. In the Delta regions of southern/eastern Arkansas I have seen photos of Canebreak Rattlers that were in excess of 8 feet in length with impressive girth. I have come very close to being hit by poisionous snakes and do not want my number to come up!

I was being careful Saturday lifting up some old boards, and sure nuff' - there was old no shoulders! High water has been the rule in many parts of our state recently, and that has driven many snakes to higher ground and into people's yards and even houses. We live 100feet above a stream, and this photo is of a hunting blind I have in the bottom just below our home. Water is up on it 6ft or so, and about 12ft feet above the normal level. I ALWAYS am on the lookout for snakes - especially in recent heavy rains & high water. I wish I could have entered some of the Cottonmouths I've seen in the County Fair - Blue Ribbon prize winners for sure!
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Wow, clawmute, you got some wonderfull spieces in yer neighborhood. I am a huge fan of the diamondbacks and the pygmys. Unfortuantely, the best i can hope fer in my neck o' the woods is a black phase timber and i gotta go a good piece north to find one and like EVERYTHING in Pa, the state thinks they own it and you aint allowed to touch it.
Maybe sometime you could post some pics o' some o yer local snakes in the other pets forum here ?
 
I don't mind garter snakes but we have cottonmouths here that are so black they look like blacksnakes. We killed one of those 2 years ago on the front porch. I thought it was a blacksnake and was gonna shoo it off the porch before my husband saw it, it immediately coiled for striking and I knew then it wasn't a blacksnake. When it opened it's mouth that confirmed it! My DH says "the only good snake is a dead snake" - we killed a very large copperhead at our mailbox last year...so, yeah, honey you take charge!!!

BTY those are very short men or that's the biggest rattlesnake I have ever seen!!!!!! WOW!!!
 

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