What Kind of Snake Is This?

[Bakershalfdozen]

Oh, I didn't kill him; I just shooed him out of our breezeway. He's a good one to have around!

So far, we haven't had any trouble with mice. Our house is brick so that helps, I'm sure.

[JerryNumbers]

Oh, I didn't kill him; I just shooed him out of our breezeway. He's a good one to have around!

So far, we haven't had any trouble with mice. Our house is brick so that helps, I'm sure.

My 1st cousin, back before he died, found a snake skin in a back corner in his bathroom.

Me, I would never been able to set in a chair & relax or sleep in a bed in that house again from wondering where that snake was.

[pneu-engine]

Black snakes are good to have around since they kill and eat rattlesnakes. A friend from Ohio sent me these pix he took in his back yard.

[lilyamongthorns]

It looks like a snake that I would not want to meet up with, of course I don't like snakes.

Last summer i went out the back door, turned left went to the edge of of the covered concrete, bent over to trim some grass, looked up and saw a copperhead about 10 feet from my face coming towards me at a high rate of speed.

I quickly jumped back and ran to our storage building grabbed a hoe, I did not have to go all the way back to where I 1st saw him for he was still coming after me, he lost the battle. I've never had a snake come after me like that on land.

In Jesus,
Jerry

Yikes!! I wouldn't even know what to do if a snake came flying at me! I would probably be paralyzed with fear and be snake dinner. I'm so glad I don't live in a big snake area!

[war_eagle]

My son found him on our breezeway.

He was only about 12-18 inches long and was not aggressive at all. As I was poking him out the door with a long stick, I got a good look at one of his eyes, and it was round. I'm inclined to think he is a juvenile rat snake. Anyone know for sure?

The camera picked up his markings really well; from a distance, he just looked black.

Like others have said, it's just a little rat snake.

I've never understood why people are afraid of snakes.

I'm a farmer, so snakes are very useful to us. Because they eat the bad insects and pests that destroy our crops, and rats and mice that come into the house, I was brought up to appreciate them from an early age. I was also taught to eat them in the Army (and, yes, they really do taste like chicken).

A few years ago, before my mother built a home on our farm and moved here full time, I was visiting her and doing some chores for her. She was sick and so I offered to come and help her around the house.

I took her dog for a walk along the beautiful creek that runs through her neighborhood when I heard a scream. I ran to see if someone had been hurt and needed help and I found a woman screaming and poking a shovel under her porch at a five foot black snake.

I asked her not to kill it, to let me catch it and let it go, instead.

So I crawled under her porch and got it and when I came out, there were four or five children standing there and they were all backing away and making all the faces children do when they see something they think is "gross".

I asked them if they wanted to pet him and, naturally, they didn't want any part of it. I explained to them that this was a good snake and wouldn't hurt them, how he helps us by eating bugs and mice and rats that would otherwise come into our homes and eat our food and make us sick.

Eventually and very tentatively, they did pet him and the first thing each child said was "I though he'd be slimy". That's a very common misconception people have about snakes.

I showed them how he "smells" the air with his tongue, how he moves by lateral undulation and what we call concertina locomotion, and how he unhines his jaw to swallow very large prey.

We then took him to the creek and let him go. The good news is that I don't think they'll be afraid next time.

[heartstrings]

We have 5 poisonous species in my area: Coral snakes, diamondbacks, pigmy rattlers, cottonmouths, and copperheads. What if a kid mistakenly thinks a poisonous species is harmless? From my experience, most people do not know their species of snakes, and those who think they do are usually wrong. My grandfather, for instance, thought brown watersnakes were "water rattlers". DO NOT encourage children or anyone to mess with snakes until they know their species well. If you haven't became absolutely familiar with all the snake species in your area...leave them ALL alone. Be safe.

[war_eagle]

What if a kid mistakenly thinks a poisonous species is harmless? We have 5 poisonous species in my area: Coral snakes, diamondbacks, pigmy rattlers, cottonmouths, and copperheads. From my experience, most people do not know their species of snakes, and those who think they do are usually wrong. My grandfather, for instance, thought brown watersnakes were "water rattlers". I once picked up a scarlet king snake from under a log and my brother in law freaked because he thought I was handling a coral snake. DO NOT encourage children or anyone to mess with snakes until they know their species well. My advice, is that if you haven't became absolutely familiar with all the snake species in your area...leave them ALL alone. Be safe.

You don't have to be familiar with all snake species. If you know that it's a black snake, then you know that it's safe. If you know that it's a rat snake, then you know that it's safe. And so on...

If you don't know what it is, then you use discretion with it.

We live out in the woods and my chidlren are confronted with snakes all the time. They know that if they don't know what it is, be careful around it.

[heartstrings]

"black" snakes?
We have about 4 species in my area which can be black; Black racers, black hognose snakes, and black water snakes called "mud snakes" (solid black with red bands on the underbelly). But Cottomouth moccasins can sometimes be very black too. Do your kids know the difference?

[war_eagle]

"black" snakes?
We have about 4 species in my area which can be black; Black racers, black hognose snakes, and black water snakes called "mud snakes" (solid black with red bands on the underbelly). But Cottomouth moccasins can sometimes be very black too. Do your kids know the difference?

Yep.

[HappyChristian]

We always knew when it was a "black" snake - and weren't afraid of them because they weren't poisonous. I think kids who grow up around snakes learn pretty quickly the ones which are poisonous and the ones which aren't.

[Bakershalfdozen]

Black snakes are good to have around since they kill and eat rattlesnakes. A friend from Ohio sent me these pix he took in his back yard.

WOW! After eating that, he wouldn't be hungry for week! That is incredible.



I'm not afraid of snakes, but they startle me if I don't know ahead of time that they are there. I would definitely be afraid of venomous snakes but not black snakes or rat snakes which is what we have around here.

We don't pick up snakes in the wild but have handled them in settings like the library incident I mentioned in another thread. They are definitely not slimy. They feel like a leather purse.

[JerryNumbers]

Bump, Snakes revisited.


Snakes also known as Garter Snakes (Thamnophissirtalis) can be
dangerous. Yes, grass snakes, not rattlesnakes. Here's why.

A couple in Sweetwater, Texas, had a lot of potted plants. During
a recent cold spell, the wife was bringing a lot of them indoors to protect
them from a possible freeze.

It turned out that a little green garden grass snake was hidden in
One of the plants. When it had warmed up, it slithered out and the wife saw it go under the sofa.

She let out a very loud scream.

The husband (who was taking a shower) ran out into the living room
naked to see what the problem was. She told him there was a snake under the sofa.

He got down on the floor on his hands and knees to look for it.
About that time the family dog came and cold-nosed him on the behind. He
thought the snake had bitten him, so he screamed and fell over on the floor.

His wife thought he had had a heart attack, so she covered him up,
told him to lie still and called an ambulance.

The attendants rushed in, would not listen to his protests, loaded
him on the stretcher, and started carrying him out.

About that time, the snake came out from under the sofa and the
Emergency Medical Technician saw it and dropped his end of th e stretcher. That's when the man broke his leg and why he is still in the hospital.

The wife still had the problem of the snake in the house, so she
called on a neighbor who volunteered to capture the snake.. He armed himself with a rolled-up newspaper and began poking under the couch. Soon he decided it was gone and told the woman, who sat down on the sofa in relief.

But while relaxing, her hand dangled in between the cushions,
where she felt the snake wriggling around. She screamed and fainted, the
snake rushed back under the sofa.

The neighbor man, seeing her lying there passed out, tried to use CPR to
revive her.

The neighbor's wife, who had just returned from shopping at the
grocery store, saw her husband's mouth on the woman's mouth and slammed her husband in the back of the head with a bag of canned goods, knocking him out and cutting his scalp to a point where it needed stitches.

The noise woke the woman from her dead faint and she saw her
neighbor lying on the floor with his wife bending over him, so she assumed
that the snake had bitten him. She went to the kitchen and got a small bottle of whiskey, and began pouring it down the man's throat.

By now, the police had arrived.

Breathe here...

They saw the unconscious man, smelled the whiskey, and assumed
that a drunken fight had occurred. They were about to arrest them all, when the women tried to explain how it all happened over a little garden snake!

The police called an ambulance, which took away the neighbor and his
sobbing wife.

Now, the little snake again crawled out from under the sofa and one of the
policemen drew his gun and fired at it. He missed the snake and hit the leg
of the end table . The table fell over, the lamp on it shattered and, as the
bulb broke, it started a fire in the drapes.


The other policeman tried to beat out the flames, and fell through the
window into the yard on top of the family dog who, startled, jumped out and raced into the street, where an oncoming car swerved to avoid it and smashed into the parked police car.

Meanwhile, neighbors saw the burning drapes and called in the fire
department. The firemen had started raising the fire ladder when they were halfway down the street. The rising ladder tore out the overhead wires, put out the power, and disconnected the telephones in a ten-square city block area
(but they did get the house fire out).

Time passed! Both men were discharged from the hospital, the house was
repaired, the dog came home, the police acquired a new car and all was right with their world.

A while later they were watching TV and the weatherman announced a cold snap for that night. The wife asked her husband if he thought they should bring in their plants for the night.

And that's when he shot her.

Yes, all snake can be dangerous, can't they?

[HappyChristian]

Oh, Jerry, that is priceless!!!

ROFLLLLLL

[JerryNumbers]

I feel sure that's not true, but no doubt any snake can make people hurt their self.

I recall when I was about 10 or so, I was working in our country store one afternoon and someone came in and wanted a pack of cigarettes. I reached to get them and to my horror there was a snake on the cigarette shelf.

I quickly told the man if he wanted them he would have to get them him self, when he saw the snake he quickly left, and I went running out the back door hollering at the top of my lungs, "Daddy, Daddy, where are you?"

He was feeding the hogs and came running thinking something bad had happened, of course I though something bad had happened, he did not seem to think it was to bad even though it was a poisonous snake.

He got the snake and was fixing to leave me in the store, I told him if someone comes in and wants cigarettes, I will not touch that shelf, but I did!