My back garden is sort of a bird sanctuary - we have lots of tall trees and bushes, 4 bird baths, and I put out bird seed. Zillions of little song birds. Also crows. I feed them (the crows) peanuts, which they love. Each morning they gather and start calling, until I get up to feed them. After they got used to me, I occasionally get what I call "chuckled" at - the soft noise they make to their babies, very different from their normal caws. I saw a film on TV where scientists did experiments and determined that crows can recognize individual human faces. My brother told me to make that clicking noise which you can make out the side of your mouth to them - now if I go out with peanuts and there are no crows, I do that, and they show up within about 45 seconds. They are very intelligent and I love having them around. If a hawk comes close to one of their nests in the tall trees around here, they put out a "calling all crows" noise for help, and crows show up from all points of the compass - within a few minutes there are dozens of them harassing the hawk until it leaves. So, I would pay attention to your crows, and you will learn about them and be entertained! Jackie

They are really active right now at our place, too. Every year a pair of Carolina wrens make a nest in an old decorative watering can that I hung on a trellis just past our front porch. I had noticed the bird was sitting on her eggs just about 4 days ago. Well, we were relaxing after yard-work on Saturday on the porch. I noticed a lizard ran very quickly almost under my chair and up the wall and even commented, "there must be a snake around somewhere", happened to look and there was a black snake's head sticking out of the watering can. I exclaimed "there's a snake in the bird's nest", my husband went over and dumped it out, couldn't believe the size of this thing that was all wadded up inside this really small space. Anyway, no sign of the brooding bird since so I'm afraid the whole family has been wiped out.

Exactly so, nativemel. Any snake bite can get infected, but if you know for sure you've been bitten by a venomous snake, get professional treatment as fast as you can to avoid complications. Don't attempt any first aid yourself, except to keep the limb below the level of your heart. Some folks now recommend a compression wrap (like with an Ace Bandage) but NOT a tourniquet. But most experts say the best thing is just to get to a medical facility pronto. Most snakebites are NOT fatal, but they can become very nasty wounds, and the sooner you receive proper treatment, the better the chances that you won't have any longterm effects. Tom, your picture is of a baby cottonmouth and you are very right that it could be mistaken for a copperhead by someone who doesn't know snakes. Of course, ALL of you folks here who read my posts on ID-ing cottonmouths would recognize this one immediately by the dark cheek stripe. Copperheads do not have this, btw. It is diagnostic for the Florida cottonmouth. There are many things this lady's snake might have been, some venomous, most NOT, but a copperhead really isn't very likely. Of course, since none of us saw her snake, we could argue the point forever and it wouldn't change her mind a bit. But for future reference to most of the folks on this group, you aren't likely to be menaced by a copperhead in Florida, unless you live in the area shown on the range map above. Nativemel, glad you dad survived the experience without permanent injury or disfigurement. I'm sure it wasn't fun, though. Be careful out there, folks. No need to be in a state of alarm, unable to enjoy your yards & gardens. But keep your eyes open and don't do silly things (like reaching under logs or rocks without looking first.) Marcia

Mike, We deliberately moved to the country because we wanted to be surrounded by wildlife. It was a sort of kum-ba-ya decision because we didn't really understand what living so close to so much wildlife management land and open river bottom land would entail. We just wanted to live in the country and enjoy all of it---the trees, the water, the wildflowers, the birds, the butterflies, etc. Maybe we underestimated how much wildlife can be dangerous, so in that sense, I think we got a lot more than we bargained for. So, our wildlife policy, especially with regards to snakes, evolved over time as we became more aware of how aggressive some wild creatures can be. We had to learn to toughen up and kill some things before they kill us. The local ranchers and farmers were great about teaching that to us. They all carry guns in the back seat of their pickups and shoot what needs to be shot. When they were shooting snakes in our early years here, they'd throw the dead snake in the bed of the pick-up and bring it to me to show me while I was working in the garden. They'd tell me what it was, describe and explain its markings, etc., and impress upon me over and over again "You have to kill it, because if you don't, it may kill you." In a way it was like have a bunch of brothers, uncles, dads or grandfathers looking out for you and teaching you, and I appreciated all of them, even if they thought I was a lunatic-hippie-freak because I gardened organically. (grin) Every one of them seemed to have a story to tell about a friend or family member who'd been bitten by a venomous snake and had been very ill, or lost a limb, or had medical problems related to that bite that lastedor years and years. After a while, when they'd bring a dead snake, instead of telling me what it was, they'd ask me to tell them what it was. I was a fast learner, but during all that I also learned to watch out for atypical coloring and markings. Being right in the middle of the state, just a little bit west of I-35, we sometimes see snakes that are a lot more common to our east, and sometimes see snakes that are a lot more common to our west. I guess we have twice the fun with twice the number of snakes, so we try to be twice as careful. In a perfect world, people and wildlife peacefully coexist. Well, in the real world, they don' always. We have some friends who woke up with a skunk in their house one night. Another friend woke up and found a rattlesnake curled up in her bedroom floor. For people here, these kinds of wildlife encounters are fairly common and you just learn to deal with it. As for your kids, one of the people bitten by a snake near us was a young teenaged girl who'd just stepped out of a swimming pool.....and that's exactly why you never can be too careful. I am willing to bet the last thing on her mind as she got out of the pool was that she was going to step on a venomous snake. I have had to work hard to make myself expect to see snakes. I watch my feet as I walk across the yard and, since it is such a habit, even when we're in a big city at something like a movie theater parking lot or a mall parking lot, I catch myself watching my feet as I walk across the parking lot. It isn't that I really expect to see a snake there in the city, but just that watching my feet so I don't step on a snake is a strongly-engrained habit now. My worst snake encounters mostly have been with timber rattlers, but once I had a pygmy rattler 2-3" from my hand and another time both the dogs and I were far too close to a western diamondback rattler. I cut up a copperhead once with the mower, and never even saw the snake prior to rolling right over it with the mower. I probably had some gray hair when we moved here as I was 39 years old, but I can guarantee you that there's a lot more gray now (only Miss Clairol knows how gray my hair is now, and she isn't going to rat me out) and the snakes are responsible for a lot of that gray hair. You know, there was a news story a few months ago about a young man stationed at Ft. Sill who got bitten by a venomous snake while hiking with another military man. His friend got him down the mountain quickly and got him medical care, but that soldier still lost his leg. I think about his story often, just to remind myself of the cost of one simple snake bite. It helps me remember to be careful. We lived here 15 years before I saw a snake in our garage, but now that garage has been added to the list of places where I have to be extra careful. You either get smart and learn to be extra careful and to deal with each threat that arises, or you get bitten. I'm doing my best to avoid being bitten. Oh, and one more thing, even a bite from a non-venomous snake can be painful and can get infected and cause problems, so I am still careful even when I am around a non-venomous snake. Dawn