OH my, I know how frightening you must have been. I was born and raised on a farm. Moved into town about 20+ years
ago. We had rattle snakes amoung us, as we went to the
pasture to feed, fix fence or going to a pond to fish. I
raised my 2 children saying"watch for snakes" ever
time we went out any where. I had a snake catcher handy
and a hoe. Found one laying across my walk one evening.
One was curled up in a shortening can, another time one
was curled up under a large cedar tree in our front yard.
We had cows to get bit on the jaw, and would swell very
bad, don't believe we ever lost one to snake bites.
I am so glad you and the cats were safe.

caroline

Oh my goodness Dawn. I can't imagine living among snakes. I'm not sure I'd ever go out of the house!

I had a friend over tonight that was freaking out over the spider I encountered yesterday. She suggested we not stay at my house because I didn't kill that spider and it might still be around. She does "spider" rounds every evening.... (at her house!)

Lisa

Caroline,

I had lots of exposure to snakes growing up...my part of Fort Worth had plentiful copperheads, and we always did a lot of hiking and camping. Also, I had lots of relatives who lived in the country. Still, nothing prepared me for the vast quantity of snakes we'd have here. However, we have the Red River on 3 sides of us and lots of wild territory there, so we'll always have lots of snakes....even 30 or 40 years from now.

Lisa,

I am such a big baby when it comes to some forms of wildlife. I am sure that I would be considered a total failure as a "country woman" by most of the people who grew up here and have been surrounded by wildlife all their lives. I don't fish, I don't hunt, and venomous snakes make me fairly hysterical. I refuse to let locals come onto our property to shoot doves, wild pigs, deer or rabbits (they're welcome to shoot all the skunks and snakes they want). I don't like to eat (or cook) venison, squirrel, rabbits or anything else that has been hanging around the yard, so if someone gives us some game meat, DH has to cook it himself if he wants to eat it.

Furthermore, I don't own any camo clothing and I don't plan our social life around the opening of deer season. In spite of all my failures and shortcomings, our wonderful friends and neighbors accept me and love me anyway. I think they just figure you can take the woman out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the woman! LOL In fact, if they hear a cougar roar, or a raucous fight that clearly involves coyotes and dogs and the noise is coming from our property, they come running, shotguns and rifles in hand, to save this fraidy-cat city slicker from the evil whatever. (And I am so grateful and appreciative.)

One of them told me that I was "salvageable" because at least I could garden and cook. LOL I also keep them pretty entertained with the occasional "guinea parade". This happens when the guineas roam up the road, and I go after them to chase them back into the yard. Of course, the cats and the dogs follow me, so if you are driving down the road at the right (or wrong) time, you'll see the guineas, followed my me--waving a rake and a straw hat to chase them out of the road--followed by the cats, who keep getting under my feet, and several dogs happily running along, barking and wagging. IT STOPS TRAFFIC. Well, mostly they stop because we fill up the whole roadway and they can't get around us. It also stops traffic because my neighbors laugh until they cry. Life here is never dull, and I (unwittingly) do my part to keep everyone entertained.

Dawn

Dawn, that is so funny, I'm crying too! I can just picture it. The "guinea parade"...toooo funny.

I know what you mean about city/country thing. I moved to the "country" when I was five, but it was just ten acres and I never really gained the true country personality. I did however absorb my family's value of gardening on a large scale. Mom and Dad could have fed 10 families off of our garden. After my mom died, my stepmother still was contending with quarts and quarts of canned green beans, and I think they were at least five years old when my mom died. Dad wouldn't let her throw them away...they were still good, ya know. :)

I don't have a veggie garden, one person just cannot do justice to a veggie garden, but flowers.....totally different story!

Lisa

Lisa,

It is hard for one person to consume all the produce from a veggie garden as food from the veggie garden seems to come in such abundance.

And, as for flowers.....well, you do flowers right! (You know, the KFC ad 'we do chicken right!'...well, you're the same, only with flowers.)

Every time I see photos of your flower garden and yard, it makes me want to ditch the veggies and do only flowers, but then I realize we can't eat flowers. (Well, you can eat some flowers, but I generally don't.)

I do have flowers, and a lot of them look pretty good most of the time, but they'd do a lot better if they weren't competing with the veggies for attention.

Dawn

Dawn, How big was it? It must be a week for snakes. Most years we kill a copperhead or two, but this year had not seen one, until Friday. My husband was weeding the perrenial onion bed which had purple top grass four feet high when he jerked his hand back and told me to bring the shovel. He had almost touched the thing. It was a little one, only 18" long.
But I am thinking that perhaps it bit my cat last week. Our cat acted very strange for a couple days, like he was partially paralyzed. He couldn't walk well at all, his head wobbled, his eyes twitched and for two or three days he just laid and didn't move. After a week he seemed to have recovered. The only thing is I didn't really see swelling. Do you know how a cat would react if it had been bit?

Only once in all the years we've lived in Ok have I seen a rattler and it was a timber rattler that my cat was crouched down watching rattle, as yours did. My 18 yr old son shot it and took the rattle as a trophy. that was 20 years ago. It was 4&1/2 ft long. Hate venomous snakes, but I leave the harmless ones alone--unless I find a black snake in the hen house. Dorothy

Dorothy,

As you probably know by now, I answered your other post about snakebites in cats, but came back here to answer as well, so people wouldn't see this later and think I was a terrible person for not responding to your question. LOL

Our timber rattler the other day was actually one of the shortest I've ever seen--only about 3 or 3 and 1/2 feet long, but was very wide (fat?). It rattled and rattled and rattled and rattled for about 20 minutes straight without striking, while I did everything I could to get the cats and guineas away from it. I was panicked, knowing any cat struck by the snake wouldn't live long. DH (who was at work) was more worried I'd get snakebit trying to get the cats away from the snake. And, speaking of being snakebit, have you ever seen a bad snakebite? I googled and saw some horrible photos of people who'd been bitten by rattlesnakes. Now I am more terrified of rattlesnakes than ever before.

This is not, by far, the worst snake year ever here. In fact, it was second to last year as the "best" snake year ever. (Virtually NO snakes last year, and am assuming flooding of the Red River killed a lot of them. Only a handful this year.)

My biggest problem, by far, is the black snakes that get in the henhouse. I have a horrible problem with them...two very large ones this year in the same week! Still, in any given year I probably see venomous snakes on our place about a dozen times....about a 50-50 split between copperheads and rattlers, with only a rare cottonmouth once every other year or so. I am more likely to see copperheads on the edge of the woods, where the grassland areas and the woods meet, and more likely to see rattlesnakes in the driveway or garden.....and cottonmouths in the ponds and creeks. If there is a gun handy, or a lawnmower, I dispose of them. If not, I head the other way to avoid them. I have a neighbor who chops up copperheads with a hoe, but I just can't stand that close to any snake. We have quite a few green tree snakes and racers as well, but I don't panic when I see them.

Dawn