Connie, If you are willing to stand there and chop up a snake with a hoe, you're braver than me! I had neighbors in Texas that used to do that when I was a kid, and these were ladies who screamed if they saw a spider! And, as far as the hoe being pricey, I have found that buying good-quality equipment pays off in the long run as it lasts far longer. Nowadays I buy all my rakes, hoes, shovels, etc. at Sears and get the Craftsman brand, because they come with a lifetime guarantee and Sears really does replace them if they break. I do the same thing with water hoses. Those big black heavy-duty water hoses from Sears have a lifetime guarantee, and Sears replaced one last year after my husband ran over it with the lawn tractor. :) And, Steffie, I ALWAYS watch my feet when I am working around the place. I've become more cautious over the years after almost stepping on rattlesnakes in the garden numerous times. During snake season, it never fails.....I'll be walking across a paved parking lot at someplace like a mall or a Wal-Mart and my husband will notice I'm watching my feet as I walk, you know, watching for snakes! It is a hard habit to break once established. I have rubber boots but I want some of the snakeproof boots and snakeproof pants I've seen at Cabella's. I have a neighbor who's lived here all his life and he wears snake chaps on his legs when he's working in brush or tall grass. Still, you know, all of us are more likely to be bitten on the hand or arm while gardening, statistically speaking. One of the reasons I mulch everything so heavily is that it cuts down on weeding and, presumably, on my chance of being bitten while weeding. I hate reaching into a shady mixed border of small trees, shrubs and ground covers in the summer months because you never know what will be in there! Alan, I can't believe you were trying to pick a fight with a water moc! We have lots of them in our four ponds and they are very aggressive, as you know. We leave them alone in the three big ponds, but if they get in the lily pond that sits between the house and the barn, we remove them. (In a nice way if possible, like with a rake or by firing a gun at them and not hitting them.) If they won't leave in a nice way, my DH shoots them. We walk by the pond dozens of times a day and all our animals like to hang out around it, so we can't put up with snakes that close to us and the house. To be fair to the snakes, most of the copperheads and rattlesnakes just want to get away from us as badly as we want to get away from them. One night my son, who was about 18 or 19 at the time, stepped out of his car after dark and stepped right on a copperhead. It startled him, but it didn't bite him. The cottonmouths are a whole different story, though, and we all steer clear of them. We got 3.5" of rain here and had some minor street flooding. Even my raised beds have been pretty wet, but might be dry enough in a day or two for me to work in them. They drain fairly fast. Dawn

Haven't seen any copperheads yet this year, but did run onto a fairly good size--over 3 ft--black snake a month or so ago. Can't allow them to be here as they will eat baby chicks. Last year a black snake broke up two bluebird nests--the same bluebird, not the same black snake. Biggest black snake I ever saw was over 7 ft. Biggest timber rattler over 4 ft and it was bigger around than the black snake. Last year saw a lovely scarlet king snake which I did not disturb as they are harmless and I seldom see one, and they are really pretty. And last year saw a green snake, also harmless.

Dorothy, We have huge timber rattlers like that here on our property and they scare me to death. Once somebody ran over one and killed it in the road right by our mailbox. All day long people stopped to look at the huge size of that sucker, and you could even hear them hollering comments (I was in the garden 100' away from the road) like "Dang! That's a big snake!" Finally someone stopped and picked it up. They asked if I minded if they took it. Ha! I was tired of looking at it and was glad to see it go. Last year we came back from a fire on a 110 or 112 degree day when not a creature was stirring in the head and found a big timber rattler lying in the driveway. I guess it was sunning itself, and I said to Tim "Is it not hot enough for that thing without the reflected heat from the driveway?" Due to its proximity to the house, he was going to shoot it but by the time we parked and were out of the car it had disappeared. We have an unpleasant encounter with a big timber rattler the size of the one you described at least twice a year, and sometimes 4 or 5 times a year. There is a dense woodland between our house and the nearest house to our south, and the timber rattlers always seem to come out of that area. Although we have western diamondback rattlers and copperheads in the garden fairly often, I've never seen a timber rattler there and I think it is because the holes in the fence are too small for them to squeeze through. And, for whatever reason, I most often encounter pygmy rattlers in one specific area of the woodland and rarely see them any place else. I have a long list in my brain of areas coded "do not enter" in summertime because of frequent snake encounters in those areas. The farther west you go from our house and towards the river, the heavier the snake population. The far back part of the property near the western fence line is so full of copperheads that I do not go back there for any reason whatsoever during snake season. Our next-door neighbor was bitten on or near her ankle by a copperhead a few years ago. She got immediate medical attention but had a lot of trouble with her leg for quite some time. She couldn't walk and had to be in a wheelchair for maybe a month. It does seem like the swelling lasted a long time. I know that snakes are an important part of the ecosystem and we'd be overrun with rodents were it not for the snakes, but I hate it when they are lurking in the yard or garden. We try to keep the area up around the house, garage, and gardens snake-free, but ignore the ones that roam the rest of our acreage. We have 14.4 acres and we don't shoot snakes on roughly 13 of those acres. However, despite the fact that they control rodents and are very helpful in that regard, I still don't like them and never will. Dawn

Thanks both of you for the id. I've got lots of snakes around here so I'll be posting more pics soon. I don't think any of them are poisonous. I'd just like to learn what they are and try to get over my fear of them... Thanks again! Michelle