Krista, I already had had a lot of encounters with snakes in trees before I saw one up on a tomato cage and also up in a tall tomato plant, so I was sort of prepared for it---though there is no way to describe what was going through my mind when I looked at a tomato plant and saw snakes eyes staring right back at me. There is a Murphy's Law specifically for snakes and guns and it goes like this: If you carry a gun with you, you will not encounter a venomous snake, but if you leave your gun in the house, you certainly will see a snake and wish you had your gun. I've learned to call someone to come shoot it and I know my job is to not take my eyes off that snake and let it get away. (It is embarrassing if a friend comes over to shoot the huge, venomous snake you just saw and you've let the snake get away because you turned your head for only a second.) About 98% of the timber rattlers I've seen are not the black phase ones--they are the standard ones with their background color varying from tan to almost a pale yellow fading to white, and then their marking are black. Around here, folks call them "velvettails" because their rattles have a velvety black outer layer. Usually the ones I see are 3-4' long, but I've seen two that were around 5' long and one that was about 6' long. By the time they have grown to be 5-6', they are very big around and are a horrible sight. It was a black phase one that bit Duke on the bridge of his nose about 6 years ago, and to this day anything tubular and black (a water hose, for example) scares him. He also remembers the exact spot where he was bitten and for several years afterwards would walk around that area, not through it, when we were out walking and got close to that location. Carol, I'm glad that your son's dog made it. I don't know why the snakes are so bad this year, but they surely are all over the place. Kim, I love lizards and toads and we have both in the gardens, but snakes will eat them, so keep that in mind. If you have something around that snakes will eat, sooner or later the snakes will show up looking for it. Amy, That is horrible and there would have been a time when I would have thought that couldn't happen. I know better now. One of the guys who works with my husband was taking a shower one day and one came up through the drain thing in the floor of the shower. He was quick and grabbed his cell phone and took a photo of it. It was so creepy. Bon, Eventually you'll encounter a snake you will wish you hadn't seen. I am stunned at how many we are seeing this year. We see snakes all the time....in the woods, in the pastures, in the roads, etc. and have a fair number of them in the yard and garden. This year, though, we are having tons of them in the yard and garden and even have had one in the garage. This is our 16th year here and the first time we've ever seen one in the garage. Long ago one of my neighbors mentioned to me that once he had one come slithering out of his vehicle's A/C vent while he was driving up the road. To this day, I cannot look at an air conditioning vent in the car without thinking of a snake slithering out of it. I kinda wish he'd never told me that story. We used bird netting with very small squares to try to keep the snakes out of Maddie's little Peter Rabbit Garden, and it worked but not the way we intended. We thought it would keep them from entering the garden. It sort of did, but it wasn't that they reached that mesh and turned away. Oh no, that would be too simple---I think they must not have been able to see the mesh or something and they'd try to squeeze through it and would get stuck and there we would be with either a live or dead snake stuck in the bird netting. It was not a pretty sight. Dawn

if you have the pic in photobucket or Picasa, they give you the code to use (pick the HTML code). http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/uw251 identifies all the common "black snakes" in Florida. Several of them have light chins, and none of those are poisonous.

Earth snakes also will put out a smelly musk if they're big enough and don't like you handling them. It's really nasty stuff. I've never seen a skink in our yard, but I love them and would be very excited to find something like that here! We did have a monstrous load of mulch dumped in our driveway by some tree trimmers last month, and later that same day we found a dead yellow-bellied racer snake a few houses down. I think it probably came out of the mulch! Glad I spoiled the kids' fun and made them come down off the mountain - those are mean snakes!

"I've had no experience with queen snakes." I understand, and I think that this is also true of the others who are calling it a Queen Snake. For Mike and I, who have each seen many, many Queen Snakes and many, many Gartersnakes, it is painfully obvious that this is a Gartersnake. "that lighting and color in photography can be misleading" I see your point very well. But...the camera is not playing tricks here. It shows a dorsal stripe and red banding because they do indeed exist. "...and never seen such a patternless species whether in shed or not" But which is more likely, a Gartersnake with some pattern lacking? or a Queen Snake with a Garter-esque head, dorsal stripe, red-banding, and found far from water? "That being said, I can't be sure of the species." That's really great to hear someone say. I'm glad that someone can admit that they're not "100% sure" it's a Queen Snake, because it is not. This is a Gartersnake. -Todd ...oh, and to keep it interesting, here's a real Queen Snake found a few days ago in western Indiana.