I’ve heard that pigs eat snakes.
This time of year the rodents are trying to move into your barn. The snakes are no doubt attracted to them.
I am terrified of snakes too.
You have my sympathy
I had a little excitement here today. I had a live baby snake in the kitchen!
I had seen several dead babies on the walkway near the kitchen in the past few weeks, and figured the barn cats found a nest and used them as toys. Not sure how my very lively little buddy came in, but it probably was somehow brought in with the laundry basket when I brought it in this afternoon.
I managed to capture the thing with some junk mail and a house cat’s bowl, and transported it to the woods (with a stern talking-to about snakes have NO business at all inside a house).
I wonder now if there’s a nest of them under the deck… eeek! I’m willing to coexist, but I’d sure like them farther away!!
Get super excited about all the free rodent control!!! I keep plenty of habitat for them & my mice are incredibly slow & stupid, I do everything short of building a snake-guiding fence leading to the farm, LOL.
Truth: http://bit.ly/1F7RsyI
I’ve lived in my suburb for five years (it’s former farm land, and in the boonies). I had never seen a snake until Friday evening. I warned the man mowing the lawn next door, (it’s a foreclosure, and he has a lawn service), and he said this is the absolute worst year for snakes he’s ever seen. I think it runs in cycles. Plus, they’re clearing the final home sites, and I think that’s displacing all kinds of animals.
Barn cats and guinea hens.
We have many kitties in our barns and haven’t seen any mice or rats in a LONG time. Only saw one copperhead this summer, he didn’t live long enough to tell his friends where he was…
Working on the barn cat-we are quite close to a busy road. I did not want to jeopordize a cat without some sort of a plan in place.
I have chickens, and I have seen snakes slither through their yard. My chickens only eat baby mice and freshly dead mice.
I don’t kill black rat or garter snakes, but I do draw the line at poisonous. I wonder how chickens or cats could get away with killing a young copperhead without themselves being bitten The young ones’ venom is reported to be more dangerous than the older ones, I would assume to give added protection when they are the most vulnerable. I remember looking down once when I was riding in the woods in Virginia and my horse’s foot came down just next to a small one, I held my breath hoping it would not bite, thankfully it did not.
I too live near busy roads. I’ve lost a cat to the road, a cat to the coyotes, and a kitten to a hawk. We implemented crating the kittens. Get a big dog crate put in a litter box for the kittens. When they are little put them in a stall during the day. If they are still little and start climbing out of the stall, exercise them in the stall and then crate. Once they get bigger they are left out during the daytime and crated at night until they are 9-12 months old and have learned the ways of the world. I know this is extreme but it works. Our current cat was a feral kitten, she is very tame, a very good mouser 
and very happy!!!
Oh and we don’t have a snake or mouse problem
[QUOTE=Calamber;8322125]
The young ones’ venom is reported to be more dangerous than the older ones, I would assume to give added protection when they are the most vulnerable. [/QUOTE]
For the sake of education, no. All venomous snakes produce their own venom, which is energetically expensive. For this reason, they do not want to use it unless absolutely necessary.
Copperheads (one of my favourite snakes for their beauty, from a safe distance, of course) have perfected the art of conserving that precious resource, necessary for eating.
Adults will most often strike with either their mouths closed, a “head-butt” fake-out in hopes of intimidating whatever they feel threatened/cornered by into running away (which, when warm enough, they much prefer to do anyway), or if they do bite, they will give “dry” bite, and not inject any venom. A good friend stepped over a log in thick brush, surprising a large female & was bitten three times in the calf, but no harm aside from some impressive fang marks. We run into them every now & again, as field biologists, but 99.99999% of encounters are but fleeting glimpses.
However, young Copperheads, like teenagers, are not as judicious. They tend to bite & dump all their venom at once, no matter what, which is why most Copperhead bites requiring anti-venom treatment come from younger animals.
Learning basic snake identification is always useful, understanding & respecting them is always a goal. Most snakes/photos presented to me as venomous are actually young rat snakes, which have bold patterns, or water snakes, both which are harmless & very helpful.
No one has to hug them (they don’t like it either, heh), but they do provide a valuable service & play an important role.
Yeah, our barn cat leaked the magic out of a little grass or baby rat snake the other day :’(
I’m perfectly fine with the local black snake population, they’re pretty cool when I see them. They mostly hang out in the woods with the occasional foray to the machine shed. Never actually seen one of the big ones in my current barn.
wildlifer, your posts are always really interesting and informative. I really enjoy what you share
Awwe, thank you, Simkie, I just want to try & help advance understanding of our critters. The fear of snakes is a primal one & unfortunately it also gets passed down from parents & peers to children. I was lucky to have a mother who, even though she is afraid of snakes, taught us early on about why each piece of the puzzle matters, along with “YOU MAY LOOK BUT RESPECT THE SPACE,” for both educational & safety purposes. And we lived in SoCal when I was a kid, so we had a rule to always take the dog out on hikes & listen for rattlesnakes (never did see one, sigh). They really are amazing & beautiful animals.
As much as it would make me happy, I don’t expect or even ask everyone to love everything (hey, I’m not happy when a spider lands on my arm, even though I much appreciate their bug eating skills!). Just do your best to be fair & rational.
Heck, snakes don’t have ears, so you can scream bloody murder all you want, LOL!
Sorry to hear about your snakey, WNT. I love cats too, but they are wildlife serial killers. Mine get to watch through the windows, but I’m sure they appreciate the climate control, heh. If only we could train feral cats to only eat house sparrows & starlings…
I dont like to see any animal be killed, but if the rodent population isnt taken care of, obviously the snake problem will continue. You then open the door to a potential snake breeding problem on your property. I have never seen good outcomes once that point is reached. Good luck!
OP, I feel your pain. I’m quite afraid of snakes. That being said, I had a break through a few weeks ago. I went out at 11pm to feed my goats after a late shift at work. It was obviously dark and I was home alone and didn’t have my cell phone. As I was in the goat paddock, I saw a big black snake less than 10’ from me. It was TRYING to get away and a damn goat stepped on it and redirected it towards me. I was frozen with fear. The snake came flying by me at about 100mph. I’m pretty sure I peed my pants. I could not move and didn’t have a phone to call for help. I bet I was there for 45 minutes trying to get my legs to work. However, something magical happened in that 45 minutes that I was unable to move. My fear of snakes got reduced from about a 7 to about a 2. Seriously. I’m not near as scared. That snake could have bit the heck out of the goat for stepping on it. The goat is about 175lbs, so she is not a little thing at all. However, the snake was not aggressive at all and wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible without hurting anyone. I needed to see that. The snake was also hanging out with my goats, which I thought was pretty cool. They were all laying in the paddock together. Heck, maybe the snake even likes my goats. Why else would it just be hanging out with all of them. So, my perception of snakes has changed and I now don’t mind seeing them at all. I hope for your sake you have a similar experience. I was actually venture to say I like seeing them when they are at a good distance and do not surprise me.
Watch out for your chickens next spring. Chickens may kill small snakes, but larger snakes will happily return the favor by eating chicks and young birds.
I bred silkies, Belgian bearded bantams and salmon faverolles, and can’t tell you how many times I found black snakes hanging horizontally on the outside wire of the pen, trying to find a way in to the peeps. Very tenacious buggers! (And that’s with the four barn cats and two Emden geese patrolling the place )
[QUOTE=wildlifer;8324633]
A good friend stepped over a log in thick brush, surprising a large female [copperhead] & was bitten three times in the calf, but no harm aside from some impressive fang marks.[/QUOTE]
Which explains the scars on the members of snake-handling churches.
I don’t know if all y’all are familiar with these churches, but where I grew up (southern Appalachians) they weren’t uncommon. I remember an old lady coming from one of them to my Sunday School class when I was a child. No idea why my Sunday School teacher thought this lady would be a good speaker, but at least she didn’t bring any friends for show and tell! :eek:
Anyway, I remember her hands and arms being covered with fang scars. Wasn’t until years later I realized she’d no doubt had lots of dry bites.
A Facebook poster near me posted a photo of the same snake that had also found a way into her kitchen. Turns out these are “northern ring-necked snakes,” which do not grow large; in fact, the itty-bitty one I saw was adult or near-adult. Non-venomous; sorta cute, in a snake-ish kinda way. Would be a lot cuter if it and its brethren did NOT find their way inside my house!
Awwwe, heart heart heart ring-necks! Adorable, beautiful little snakes, usually coal black with a bright orange or yellow ring around their neck (yeah, taxonomists are not all that creative sometimes…). Harmless & generally very docile, like the rough green snake – I’ve picked them up many times & they just kinda chill & say hi while I admire & then put them back on their tree/rock/perch. <3
In MI, we don’t have a lot of venomous snakes. A few…but not many. For the most part we have really “good” snakes that help take care of rodents and such.
I used to have one that lived under my water trough. I kind of forgot to tell my helper about it when I went on vacay and it scared the crap out of her when she dumped it. Oops! It had run over my sandaled foot once too and scared me but generally, I’m pretty happy for snakes.
In VA, not so much with the Copperheads. And in TX not so much as we had, on more than one occasion, venomous snakes staking out our hay barn.
But in MI? Meh, I’m easy.
I will say that I had the most lovely rat snake in VA. She was a big lady. I moved her off of my neighbor’s porch more than once because my elderly neighbor was MORTIFIED. But when she rented her place out and two biologists moved in, it was cool. On maybe their second day in the place, I “warned” them about “our” snake. About that time that we were visiting outside in our yards, she came out between us, went up a tree and caught a bird right in front of our eyes. My neighbors were so geeked. LOL
I have always been a fan of snakes. Used to catch them and keep them for a few days (in secret) in my room as a kid. I’ve never been too bothered but I’m respectful. They have a job and I like what they do.
