Susan, DH and I both found snakes this week. He was shoveling chips to mulch the fruit trees and showed me a small brown snake that I think may have been either a ground snake or a worm snake. Then a day or two later I steppd on a small garter snake. The brown snake was a burrower as it was down in the chip pile and DH dug it out, but the garter snakes I see are always on top. And they are not nocturnal. I often see them during the day. In fact, we're getting too many--I saw at least 3 of differing sizes last year--and the frog and toad population is decreasing. If you've ever heard a leopard frog held in the jaws of a garter snake scream, you'll never forget it. I rescued two last year. The only snakes we kill here are copperheads and it is a rare summer that we don't kill at least one. There used to be speckled King snakes and scarlet king snakes but last summer didnt' see either one. OOps, just remembered that over the last two years we have killed 4 Black Rat Snakes, which I would tolerate if they only ate rats but one twice ate the baby bluebirds before they left the nest. I caught him the second time tho. Those things are incredible climbers. Dad once lowered a Martin House to see why the Martins were having fits and found a Rat Snake in the house. The only way into it was up a 15 ft metal pole. I've seen them climb trees and wooden poles but not small metal ones.

We too kill copperheads and rat snakes (chicken snakes). I wish we didn't have to kill the chicken snakes. But we have quite a bit of poultry and they favor chicks and eggs over rats and mice. Otherwise I'd want all I could get, since they are beneficial. We also have a good population of skinks.

We are finding quite a few of the garter and brown snakes in the vegetable garden. I (notice I don't say "we") love it! They are VERY beneficial, eating crickets and grasshoppers as well as rodents.

Last week Jerreth almost stepped on a blue racer. She DID NOT like it and asked me to kill it. But blue racers are pretty much like rat snakes, only prettier, rarer and, I think, a little less likely to eat chicks. Instead, I caught it, contained it, and took it to work eleven miles away, where I released it in a suitable location.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Good for y'all. I don't expect to see anything poisonous here in the city - I'm only 3 miles from downtown. But, it is always possible.

I was just surprised to see that the garter snake had crawled up inside the container to hibernate apparently, but at least it had a nice, soft bed for winter.

I remember seeing Blue Racers, Copperheads, Cottonmouth, and what we called Black Snakes that got humongous (is this what you refer to as the rat snake). My dad always let a really big guy hang out under our porch while napping. He ran the length of the porch, which in porch terms is not very big, but in snake terms is very large! We used to catch the little Ring Snakes all the time as kids.

Susan

George,

I wasn't familiar with the term "skink" so I looked it up. So THAT'S what those things are. We have a minimum of a gazillion of them here, but I never knew what they were called. The Aggie website calls them reclusive, but apparently our skinks can't read. I can't go to the mailbox without seeing half a dozen or more. A day in the garden would give me a bucket full if I collected them!

Thanks to you I now know the word mattock and the word skink. What else am I going to learn from you?

Susan, today while DH was shoveling compost he found a ringneck snake in the wheelbarrow after he'd pushed it across the garden. We let it go of course, as it is harmless and NOT as I was told when I first moved here "a baby copperhead." I've seen baby copperheads and they look exactly like adult copperheads with heads even bigger compared to their skinny little bodies and the same copper and brown coloring. And yes, Black Rat Snakes get ginormous! I killed one once (in the chicken house, so don't anybody fuss at me) that was over 8 ft long. I've had them kill full grown ducks on the nest so they could eat the eggs.

And George, I've been seeing skinks too, both the 5 lined ones and the bluetailed ones. Have also been seeing a lot of toads and frogs.

I think most snakes are diurnal. I see them 24/7. This week we have had them in the lily pond and in the Peter Rabbit garden.

We've also had frogs all over, a few turtles and some skinks and salamanders too.

We kill any venomous ones up around the house and any that get into the chicken coop, whether they are venomous or not. Otherwise, we try to peacefully co-exist with them. The little brown snake I found in the garden this week just froze in place and waited for me to go away. I wasn't planning on going anywhere, so I scooped it up with the compost scoop I had in my hand and moved it to a grassy area.

Last night someone in Marietta had a big, black rat snake in their house and called the police who dutifully arrived, entered the home, found the snake and took care of it. I would not like to find a snake of any sort in my house.

Susan, We used to have copperheads in our neighborhood in Fort Worth when I was a kid in the 1960s/70s and that neighborhood was not rural and had been there about 30 years. We also had possums and foxes there. I think there's a lot more wildlife in cities than most people think.

Dawn

Same here. Everything overwintered at the surface. Mostly, the excess moisture has brought many things out of the ground and are visible such as salamanders and toads. I worry copperheads will be forced onto ground during these times.

I was startled to find a small snake in the compost bin. He's harmless and was just looking for breakfast.

Was nice to see the life activity at that level in the garden , though.

bon

Last evening our 6-month old border collie mix was barking and lunging at the garden fence while DH and I were out there. It was the large garter snake two feet up in a spirea shrub right inside the fence. We told the pup that it was ok for it to be there and both snake and pup moved on.

Dorothy, Your dog sounds very well-behaved. Mine would have barked their heads off at that snake. Any of them except Duke might have approached it. Duke was bitten by a timber rattler a few years ago and barely survived. He remembers it well. Even seeing a black water hose makes him freak out and run for the house, and he's a big 120-lb. dog.

Bon, Copperheads already are up and out here and someone in the county west of us was bitten by a venomous snake two weekends ago although I don't know what kind of venomous snake got him. He was transported to the hospital Code Three, which is bad.

We have had snakes out for at least 3 weeks, both venomous and non-venomous ones, and skinks, lizards, toads, frogs and turtles have been out longer than that. They've been loving this weather. The frogs croak all afternoon and evening when I'm working in the garden. They're probably croaking all night, but I am inside with the windows closed and cannot hear them.

Our first year here we thought we'd sleep with the windows open in the spring, which was a huge mistake. The frogs would get so ridiculously loud that we couldn't sleep. Anyone who thinks that rural areas are nice and quiet at night must live in a rural area very different from the one I live in. There is a never-ending racket all night long.

Dawn

I LOVE that racket! It's so much better than the traffic noise we endured back in NJ. It seems the herons spared us a few bullfrogs, and we can hear them, down by the pond at night. (insert contented sigh)

George

My daughter and family moved into a mid-Tulsa house with a very large overgrown yard. As they have cleared brush they piled it up in the backyard pending removal. She said it had to go when she saw the rabbit run into it and had plans to move it. Then yesterday she saw a copperhead crawl into it and informed her husband HE needed to move it--with a pitchfork. And yes, she knows copperheads, having been raised here in the country.

George, Well I love the racket too, except when I am trying to sleep. It beats hearing city sounds and highway sounds. I just think that the lily pond is too close to the house because that means the frogs are just a few yards from our bedroom windows. If the big bull frogs would stay down at the big pond which is 200' from the house, they probably wouldn't keep us awake at night.

Dorothy, I'm seeing lots of snakes out early and have had to start being extra careful about picking up anything off the ground or even reaching into thick growth in the flower bed to weed the poppies and larkspur. It is rare we have to worry about brushpiles this early in the year. I have a small brushpile east of the garden that Tim will have to move because I know something's in there....a little trail leads up to it. Presumably it is a bunny trail, but that doesn't mean snakes might not be in there too.

Dawn

Our pond is a couple hundred yards from the house so the bullfrogs aren't too loud, but the house is in the edge of 10 acres of woods. That means that during July and August the Cicadas are deafening. There are also lots of little tree frogs which can be quite loud hanging on the outside of the window glass.