Speaking of snakes...my neighbor found a baby Copperhead in his driveway this weekend. I was outside when he almost stepped on it. There was no mistaking the viper head. Yuck!

Dawn: How do you manage? I have cut my grass down to the nub so I can see where I am stepping and I am still freaked out!

Randy: I live in Norman. Are you sure you don't have venomous snakes? I admit that I live in far east Norman in a rural area but still.......

BTW, Mrsfrodo, thanks for the information.

VERY good information to have! With all of the overgrown lots around here, that they started brushhoggin yesterday, I have a feeling we might hae a few uninvited guests. This provides some peace of mind... Thank you!!

Hi Andria!

Thanks for the info. It is the type of info we all need.

Around here, our local hospitals are well-versed in handling snakebites, and they seldom use anti-venin, saying it often causes worse complications than the snakebite itself. (This was a shock to me!) For routine copperhead bites, they tend to treat the symptoms, which can include using medications to treat the swelling and using a fairly fast-flowing IV to try to flush one's system thoroughly. For rattlesnake bites, their treatment of choice depends on what kind of rattlesnake it was, as well as how badly the person is reacting to the bite.

A lot of bites turn out to be dry bites. While painful at the time, they are fairly easy to recover from.

The most serious cases we see here involve small children being bitten and antivenin is most often used in those cases when it is used at all, especially in toddlers. In addition, the local EMS folks here in southern Oklahoma tend to put those kids on the local medical helicopters and immediately fly them to Oklahoma City, Dallas or Fort Worth.

For pets, most vets use a combination of antihistamines to arrest the swelling (especially in limbs where swelling can cut off the blood supply to the limb very quickly) and IVs to flush the animal in the worst cases. Of course, if the animal is a high-dollar cutting horse, they may take more drastic action.

When we moved here, I was SHOCKED to learn how seldom they actually use antivenin here.

Julie,

When you live in a snakeprone area, it affects every single thing you do and how you do it.

I have learned to ALWAYS, ALWAYS watch the ground as I walk, having once stepped ON a copperhead and having once stepped right OVER a diamondback rattler that I didn't see in a pathway in the veggie garden. Sometimes when I am in a big city walking across something like a mall parking lot, I realize that I am still looking down at the ground and watching my feet. That always makes me chuckle at myself.

We are extremely careful about where we walk after dark. It is good to make all pathways, rather paved or whatever, of LIGHT-COLORED material so snakes show up better on them. All pathways need to be well-lit. Unfortunately, the lighting seems to attract snakes. Actually, the lighting attracts bugs and the bugs attract frogs, toads, etc. and that attracts snakes, so sometimes you just can't win.

In the yard and around the house, we MUST always keep everything mowed down short and weedeated. No exceptions.
I have had to refrain from planting a lot in the form of groundcovers near areas of foot traffic, as the ground covers give snakes cover.

In the pastures, we like to let everything grow tall so the wildflowers and native grasses can bloom and set seed and both feed the wildlife and perpetuate themselves. So, we leave them tall, but cut pathways that are 8' to 10' wide so we have plenty of warning if a snake enters the pathway ahead of us.

As far as the heavily wooded areas, we almost NEVER set foot in them during snake season, which for us runs from late March to late November most years. If we must go into the woods, we wear knee-high boots or snake chaps or both. We also maintain pathways in the woods and try to always stay on them.

We don't rake and bag leaves by hand in the fall because the copperheads are ALWAYS in those leaves. We either cut up the leaves with the mulching mower, pick them up with the mower's grass catcher, or pick them up with the leaf blower/vacuum.

We do any needed clean-up of the 10 acres of woods ONLY in winter and only after low temps are consistently below freezing. It is not that unusual to have snakes up in the woods looking for a quick meal on a warm winter day. Even then, we wear leather work boots with steel toes and always wear leather gloves.

In the veggie garden and flower beds, I use a lot of mulch and I keep my hands OUT of that mulch on hot days, 'cause snakes like to hide under it. I pull any weeds that sprout as soon as I see them because they give snakes a hiding place. The veggie garden pathways are mulched with hay or straw, because copperheads and rattlesnakes blend in too well with wood mulch.

If snakes are hanging around the garden, pond, henhouse, guinea coop, etc., I spread a band of sulphur, because the snakes don't like the smell of the sulphur.

Even with all these precautions, snakes are always around and snakebites are common amongst our pets. None of the three of us have been bitten, but we have had some close calls.

We have cats and they help keep down the population of rodents (field mice, wood rats, moles, voles, gophers, etc.) which in turn gives the snakes less incentive to be around. The guineas and hens also are great at finding and pecking snakes to death. The guineas and hens both have a particular sound they make when they find a snake, so they are great about 'sounding the alert'. The poultry free ranges all day and is securely locked up before sunset.
If you have a possum on your place, keep it and encourage it to stay. Possums kill and eat snakes and are immune to the venom of the poisonous one.

For the record, we kill poisonous snakes but not non-venomous ones.

If snakebit, it is imperative to limit movement, including trying to remain calm and keep your heartrate low. People (or pets) who get extremely upset or who start running for the house raise their heartbeat and cause the venom to disperse throughout their body more quickly. I try to get a snakebit person to lie down and elevate the bitten limb, if possible, while I call 9-1-1. I always keep liquid Benadryl on hand for both people and pets as it quickly gets the swelling under control.

Because we have so many rural areas, snakes are and probably always will be common in many parts of our state, so we just have to be alert and do whatever we can to stay safe.

I haven't seen but two snakes this week. One was a copperhead dead in the road and the other was a ratsnake crossing the road. That makes this a pretty quiet week, but it is only Wednesday!

Dawn