Beautiful photo of your garden, and quite a lot of excitement with the snake!! Unless you remove your rock tower, no doubt new snakes will take up residence. Snakes love to sun themselves on those warm rocks.

Maybe just think of the snakes as your friends. They eat all kinds of bugs, slugs, voles, moles, mice, etc. I smile when I see snakes in the garden, I think of them as doing all that critter control that I don't do.

Although I like snakes, I don't think I would like one ON me . . .

That made me laugh out loud! : )
I suppose b/c I could imagine that happening to my DH and I! No plan ever goes completely as planned, yet I'm happy in the end you were able to remedy the situation. And kudos to you both for doing it in a humane fashion. Sadly, so many nowadays don't.
BTW, your garden is really lovely.

Your garden is beautiful, and I thank you for sharing that amusing incident with us!

I also have at least one resident garter snake, which I know is to be expected because I and several of the neighbors have created some small walls of stacked fieldstone around our gardens from some leftover stones the builders of the development left behind. Looks pretty, but I know the snakes like it too!

I also have five kitty cats, four of which like to come outside with me when I tend my gardens in front of the house (the back is off limits to my cats - that's where my bird houses and bird feeders are). Well I have seen my friendly snake wandering amongst the plants up front on several occasions, and the cats have seen him as well.

My question is, if a closer encounter were to occur and the snake actually bit one of the cats, would the cat get sick or suffer other untoward effects???

My daughter (resident snake lover) says no, the bite would not be poisonous unless it was a rattlesnake, and that the only concern would be of infection, but still I worry.

What about if the cat bit the snake, would the cat get sick from that?

I know that sounds dumb, but believe it or not, one of my cats picked up a toad in his mouth once - didn't even bite or swallow it - and got so sick from that toad that he almost died!!! Huge vet bill and a couple of days later he came home and has been fine since, but the vet had never even heard of a cat getting sick from a toad. He later did some research and learned that a colleage knew of a pet lizard once that ate a toad, and the lizard died from it within the hour.

After that incident, I keep very close watch on the cats while they are outside because I don't want them catching and eating ANYTHING like that again! They HAVE caught a couple bats that somehow got inside the house, and that's scary too, so even though they are essentially indoor cats, they all have up-to-date rabies vaccinations.

Boy, pet ownership is even more expensive than gardening, but that's a whole 'nother subject!

Thanks again for the story and the beautiful pic of your garden!

I looked it up on the net last year and yes, garter snakes do have a very mild venom. The cat wasn't affected, if he was bitten, but I suspect that he wasn't, because he has such long fur. If the cat bit the snake only the snake would suffer cause the venom is only in the snakes mouth. I suspect the cat would kill the snake trying to "toy" with it rather than the other way around.
I think that toads emit a defensive liquid that makes dogs and others drop them cause it leaves a bad odor and probably taste. Sounds like the effcts might be more serious if your cat got that sick.
Von

I laughed when I read about the cat and the snake. My mother is hyper-scared of snakes, we kids tease her about it. Once she found a live snake in her basement laundry sink. Oh the screaming! I sent her several news clippings about the movie coming out next month "Snakes on a Plane." I told her about your cat and the dead snake and the one you captured and re-located. She said you should have let the cat kill it, too. My friend's son ran over a snake with his bicycle. He went home and got it a bandaid. LOL.

My Mom was going to clean her carpet so she pulled off the molding and started to vacumn it real well. Well the foundation was old(rock held together with morter)and apparently a garter snake decided it would make a good home. It came into the livingroom when she removed the moulding!!! She sucked it up in the vacumn cleaner and left it running until my brother in-law could get there to remove it. It had died by then.
We were all a little jumpy when we sat down in that room to watch TV for quite a while.
This happened when I was a teenager and we still pick on her about it. My poor brother in-law always gets the good jobs!!!
Von

I too, laughed out loud reading the story! I cannot imagine how you felt when the snake was flying through the air towards you! (I would probably have to change my clothes after that, if you know what I mean! LOL) Glad the kitty is okay, but if she needs more snakes to play with, bring her here! I have been loaded with snakes this year. My Australian Sheperd wanted to chase them, but I told him "NO!, don't hurt the babies!!!" and he leaves them alone. Now that I know they do have some vemon, albeit weak, I'm glad he doesn't bother with them now.

Jackie

I don't think cats are hurt by garter snakes, because my outdoor cat has regularly caught them and eaten their heads, leaving the broken corpse on the doormat, and she is none the worse for it. I wish she would just leave them alone because they are good to have in the garden and they don't bother anyone unless someone throws them at your chest.:)

One of my indoor cats has twice caught a bat and paraded around with the clicking thing in his mouth. Unnerving, to say the least.

Garter snakes are most definitely not poisonous, I caught them wild growing up and kept them as pets for many years. They're generally very docile, but occasionally bit me by mistake at feeding time. I suffered absolutely no ill effects, and as it happens, they don't even have real teeth, just some boney plates to help make sure the slugs don't escape - they can't give you any more than a pinch.

Toads on the other hand are definitely poisonous. Next time you see one, take a look at the glands behind its eyes - there's a poison in there that will definitely make house pets very sick, although the toxicity varies from one type of toad to another (and probably the size of the toad).

Story cracked me up :)