If you have a snake like the one in the picture above, they are a problem for your pond. There poop and oil based skin will leave foam on top of the water, and they will definitely "try" and eat your fish. I have Koi. For anyone else who does knows they are not cheap. My biggest "Snoopy" I found dead this morning with little teeth marks above it's fin, bleeding. To me, this means that the snake will brake the laws of nature and try to eat something 10x it's size. It looks as if it realized it was to big and left him there to die. At $100 to 300 dollars a fish, this I can not stand for. I have yet to catch the snake but I dropped some moth balls by my rose marry, where I first saw the snake, to hopefully repeal. I doubt they'll work. Seems all I have left to do is catch and dispose of. Google really comes in handy now adays about anything you need to know about anything. So google snake trap or pest control for the bigger snakes. Hope this helps! I leave more feedback if I ever am able to get ahold of the snake.

Wayne_Mo,, I looked at some of the little snakes again today. I believe you are correct about the Brown Snakes. The others are definitely Copperhead babies. I won't kill the brown snakes, but I will the Copperheads that I find in the mulch pile. This place was once known as Copperhead Hill and for good reason. We have two kinds: the banded ones (with the 'X' pattern) and the plain ones (all coppery no bands). The ones I am finding in the mulch, so far, are the plain ones. Big wide, diamond shaped heads and pits below vertical eyes. If their eyes are rounded, I know they are harmless. Of course, these are so small, it is hard to get a close look until I kill them. They are only about 6-7 inches long. I have found Copperheads on this place 3-1/2 ft in length. Old suckers. I found one 4 ft and called the OSU department to see if they wanted it because of its record size. No, they had Copperheads they told me. I tried to explain to them that this one was a record breaker, but they didn't seem to understand what I was saying, or just thought I was an hysterical female and exaggerating the size. Ignoramuses. So, I killed it. It was going after my Dalmatian - chased him all over his pen, poor Benny. I killed it with my sword. It had just shed its skin in early spring and was very grumpy. A female. No thanks, Ma'am. Don't want any of your babies. I've had several close calls over the years. Generally they turn tail and run, but sometimes they don't. If they are protecting their den or get cornered they stand their ground and strike. This whole hill is sandy loam built upon a thick underground layer of sandstone. There are lots of crevasses and holes between the layers of rock, perfect places for them to make their nests and spend the winter. But when shoveling out mulch into my flower beds, I don't have much time to ID them closely when they are taking off in different directions. I've had Corn snakes get nasty with me over frogs they had caught. I pulled a frog out of ones mouth one time, but he took off very fast after I got that poor little Leopard frog free. The frog was screaming. Sounded like a little child. That really freaked me out. I didn't know they could scream like that. After that, every time a snake was near, all the Leopard frogs started screaming. I swear they were alerting each other and me too. I had a big Bull snake drop down over my head out of a tree once. He was trying to threaten me away from that tree. Upon closer examination, I saw that he was going after and eating baby Blue Jays. They were screaming their heads off and the parents were hysterical. I know that is what snakes do, but it ticked me off. An aggressive snake can give you a very nasty bite that can get badly infected. I tried chasing him off with a stick, but he wouldn't budge, so, I dragged the garden hose out there and sprayed him to try to make him leave. He went from tree to tree, but kept coming back to the tree where the baby birds were nested. After an exhausting battle with the water hose, I finally got my rifle out and shot him. He was a big dude. I did not want him going after my baby granddaughter who I was raising at the time. She was just walking and loved being out with me in the garden. Anyway, thanks for the information on the Brown Snake. I don't like to kill anything, but I can't have snakes that bite or kill living around my place. They just have to go elsewhere. There are meadows and pastureland all around me and plenty of wooded areas around me for miles and miles in every direction. It's not like they are being encroached upon by mankind out here. I'm not feeding my animals and birds to feed snakes! ~Annie

Patty, I really don't think I am brave at all. I am a huge chicken and venomous snakes simply terrify me. I just do what I can to survive. I knew, realistically speaking, that we'd have venomous snakes when we moved to a rural area. Knowing it would happen, though, is not the same thing as having it happen! I just don't think I realized how many we'd see some years nor did I understand how much the close encounters would affect me. I am, truly, a big fraidy-cat. I will say that living in the country is not for sissies. Venomous snake encounters are not nearly as frightening as running into a cougar, panther, feral pig, rutting deer or rabid skunk....all of which we've encountered here. And, when you buy formerly "raw" land where local residents have hunted for decades, you WILL encounter poachers on your land and they WILL tell you that they've always hunted on this land and they aren't going to stop now just because you bought the land and put a house on it. And you'd better be armed and ready to defend yourself, and you'd better call the sherriff and report each incident and make it clear you will prosecute, which is only possible if your land is properly posted, by the way. So, not all snakes are animals..... We cleared out all the human snakes found on our property in just a couple of years, but the actual reptiles will be with us forever because we're so close to the Red River. I love, love, love living in the country and there are MANY enjoyable wildlife experiences.....bunnies, birds, fish, turtles, lizards, frogs, toads, squirrels, foxes, bats, dragonflies and damselflies, etc. I've had the great fortune to observe both bald eagles and golden eagles flying overhead or sitting on the tops of haybarns or trees. How wonderful is that? And, 99.9% of the people you encounter are wonderful, but there are a few that are scarey. So, you take the good with the bad and just try to go with the flow. Carol, I am as careful as I can be.....and, truly, I feel like God is watching over me and pray he continues to do so. Once, DS and I stepped into a "bunch" of coppperheads--a mother and 15 or 20 babies.....in the middle of the pasture. We fled from them....they fled from us, and somehow, we weren't bitten. (We were scared almost to death.) Those snakes are why we now mow 8' wide paths through all our pastures, and walk only on those paths!) Another time I was walking through my garden on a chilly fall morning and stepped right over a western diamondback rattlesnake that was coiled up in a path. I DIDN'T EVEN SEE IT! Luckily, DS was with me and said something like "Um, Mom, don't move because there's a rattlesnake right behind you." Of course, I moved.....immediately jumped forward a few feet and turned and stared at that snake, wondering all the while why it didn't strike me. DS went to the house, got a gun....and you know the rest. On yet another occasion, I was raking leaves and picking them up and putting them into a bag to carry them to my compost pile, and I suddenly realized a small pygmy rattlesnake was about 3" from my hand and was poised to strike......and, since I was crouched down low, I simultanouesly droppped the handful of leaves and the bag, and somersaulted backwards to get away. I didn't enter the woods for months after that. Those are a few examples....but there have been many snake encounters, and I honestly believe that it is only through God's grace that I haven't been bitten. For what it is worth, I don't hate all snakes, and I know that without them being here to eat all the field mice and meadow voles, we'd be overrun with rodents. We don't kill non-venomous snakes unless they are in our henhouse eating eggs, keats or chicks. I've even rescued non-venomous snakes which were being attacked by our cats, chickens, dogs or guineas. We have 14.5 acres and we pretty much leave the 10 or 11 wooded acres to the snakes during snake season. Then, in the winter months, we clear pathways and remove brush and enjoy walking through the woods (with dogs and cats tagging along behind us), but we don't kill snakes in the woods....we just avoid them during the 6 months of "snake season". In the couple of acres closest to the house, though, venomous snakes aren't tolerated. And, really, one of my biggest fears ISN'T that a venomous snakes will bite me, but rather that it will get away before we can kill it. If the venomous snakes are near the house, barn or garden, I want them dead. I'm really enjoying the cool weather too. During the cool spell a couple of weeks ago, we got down to 44 or 45 a couple of nights and I was deliriously happy in those early morning temps. I knew, though, it wasn't quite sweater weather, yet, and of course we haven't been that cool again, but it is in the 50s here this morning and that is nice. I know what you're saying about the nuts on the roof of the bunhouse! Our chicken coop and guinea coop are under a pecan tree and their roofs get showered with nuts too. Then the poultry begins squawking and carrying on because they think a predator is trying to come in through the roof. (A previous chicken coop had a fiberglass skylight to let in some light, and a large owl once crashed through that skylight in an effort to get himself some chicken, so their fear is not exactly unwarranted.) Fall is my favorite time of year except for the part about the snakes being up and about....and the knowledge that colder weather is coming. Once we've had several hard freezes and the snakes are denned up for the winter, I enjoy fall even more! I made it through a whole day Friday without running into a snake, so my nerves have calmed down a little. Well, actually, I saw the same snake Friday morning that I saw Thursday night, because we had to lift the bucket, retrieve it and get rid of it. It wasn't as scarey, though, because I KNEW it was there. To me, the most upsetting snake is the big, black, often 6-foot-long rat snakes that get in the chicken coop. I HATE even seeing them at all....even if we are a mile from the house and I see one crossing the road, it just makes me feel ill. I hope I've seen my last venomous snake of the year, but at the same time, I am sure I haven't. Dawn

Well y'all never cease to amaze me, coming up with all these words I've never heard before.... We lived in northern Indiana for about ten years. I hated it because we got all that lake-effect snow. Snow is pretty at first, but when it snows upon snow upon snow, it gets discolored from pollution and what-all and can be quite an eyesore. Started snowing around Halloween and wouldn't be all melted till around Mother's Day. So depressing. But I've experienced a wind like that, in Indiana. It was really weird. DH had just gotten home from work, and we were standing outside when the wind came up and the temperature dropped dramatically, within seconds. One of the things I missed was the Oklahoma sky. Those beautiful clouds, the sunrises and sunsets, the blue, blue sky. We lived not far from Gary Indiana during the 1980's and the sky was always gray from the pollution of the industries there, and in nearby Chicago. We went to Chicago from time to time, and I found it so different from what they advertise. I didn't care for it at all. We had sandy soil, and it rained a lot. I had a good garden there because we didn't get the oppressive heat that we get here, except for maybe two weeks in the deep summer. But I couldn't plant till late, and then I was done early. So it just didn't take up much of my time. I was young then, and had kids in grade school and a Brownie scout troop, so it's not like I had much time to spare. I still have a few tomato plants and some bell pepper plants growing in the garden. I imagine it won't be much longer, though. It has been so warm that my Bright Lights chard and my Osaka kale have gone all to green. The peach tree is trying to bud out anew and lots of the zinnia seed that fell to the ground when I pulled the plants have germinated. A lot of the trees have not even gone dormant yet. I have started collecting leaves again this fall. We've been lucky enough to find several bags of leaves on curbs while we're out going to garage sales on Saturday mornings. Some of them have been quite heavy and I've been concerned that we might be getting something in addition to leaves (eeek!), but when we get it home and open it, we find that the home-owner shredded the leaves and there are just a lot of them in there. That's quite a bonus for us. We try to be really careful that we don't pick up someone's garbage by mistake. I can remember a time when I would be embarrassed to be taking bags of leaves off someone's curb but now I don't give a rip what people think. Sometimes getting older has it's benefits. Since the apple tree fell over, I have space in which to enlarge the garden, and so I'm needing more leaves than usual. Funny thing, though, the red delicious was wobbly, too, I thought I'd be losing it right away. But it has seemed to become stronger since the yellow delicious went down. I ordered a Two-in-One heirloom red/yellow delicious tree from Stark's and will plant it in the front yard where there are no obstacles underground. Our back yard is kind of a problem because before we moved here, the previous owners filled in an in-ground swimming pool. We don't know exactly where the pool was, so we apparently planted the apple trees over something that wouldn't let the roots expand. I imagine it will take the rest of this month to get the garden all cleaned up and of course I'll be working on applying those leaves whenever we have a good day. We're in our second day of rain now and it's turned chilly. I might throw on my rain poncho and go out there and dump the bagged leaves that are already shredded so they can get wet and will pack down. But actually before I can do that, I need to pull up the last two tomato plants that are there. They have tomatoes on them, and I hate to do it, but the plants are growing up through a big length of stock panel that I laid on the ground to keep the cat from digging there, and I can't really put the leaves down till I get that out. I will probably bite the bullet and pull those tomato plants, surely it won't be very much longer till we actually do get a killing frost. Of course there have been many years when I wasn't paying attention, but I cannot remember when we ever waited so late for the frost before. I already have my plant lights on, as I rooted some salvia that I couldn't seem to get any seed from, I brought in my stevia and scented geraniums, and I'm trying to root starts of both of those and some of my rosemary in water. I don't think the stevia is going to root, but all else looks green and healthy in it's water jar and I'm finally beginning to see some little root threads on the rosemary. (The rosemary that I transplanted from it's pot to a spot out in the raised bed in the herb garden is still green and doing well. I hope it makes it through the winter, as it's supposed to be hardy, but I've never had rosemary make it through winter before.) Oh, and the starts that I dipped in rooting compound and then planted, have mildewed and died. I've tried rooting compound without success before. Does anyone use it and have good luck, or did I just waste my $5 for that little jar of white powder? I remember when we first moved into this house, there was a lot of brush just outside the fence. We got 3 or 4 beautiful days in January -- shirtsleeve weather, in fact -- and we went out there and cleaned all that up. (we had moved here right around Thanksgiving) Which meant that we were doctoring poison ivy during Feb.