we do watch her closely when she is outside, so that part is taken care of!

as to putting your hands and feet where you cannot see, that is the reason i am ripping out the overgrown landscaping. it has totally obscured our walkways, so you have to walk in the grass or thru the shrubs to get around the house. i keep the grass mowed once a week, so it is not hard to see if a larger snake were laying there.

i read elsewhere that a rat terrier or a cat is good for keeping snakes away, so i may give that a try.

i have noticed a lot of mice and frogs outside lately, so i guess food has pulled these snakes in closer to my house. the main ditch next to my house is dry other than in the culverts, so they are probably just looking for food and water. maybe the rains next week will help.

Cats do kill snakes and snake prey, but they also take out a lot of birds and other animals you make like to have around so its a mixed blessing. I think mothballs and such don't work. I wish you best of luck. I have found cottonmouths usually open their mouths agape without striking, and actually I have yet to have one strike at me, but they do have a menacing appearance and they should be given a wide berth when seen. Hopefully your daughter can learn to give them a healthy respect when she is old enough to venture out on her own. Until then, keep up the good work in watching her closely.

The things you are doing are about the best you can do. There is probably no effective snake repellant (some argue that Snake-A-Way or mothballs or sulfur work but I think the hard evidence on that is lacking). I don't know of anything that would kill snakes that wouldn't also be harmful to almost all wildlife as well as pets and small children.

Fortunately cottonmouths are not nearly as aggressive as their reputation and they tend only to get aggressive if strongly provoked. Some pets can be bad about provoking snakes. I'm glad your dog was either inattentive or uninterested. It bodes well for the dog staying out of trouble. Cats will kill snakes (as well as other animals) but they will occasionally get bit by the snakes when they provoke them in the process of killing them.

I'd say taking care of the thick vegetation as you are doing is your best and most effective deterrent. It won't guarantee a cottonmouth free yard but nothing will guarantee that, and it will help quite a bit to keep them away and make them more visible if they do pass through.

Those are very good points. There is no realistic way of riding snakes. Unfortunately the territory we seek, belongs to the snakes. The best thing to do is deter the snakes by implementing the points given by Wayne and Keith.

I also wanted to add that artificial cover may attract the cottonmouths. Boards, sheets of tin, upturned boats and other places that snakes can seek refuge under should be cleaned up. Snakes often use artificial cover for shelter, to regulate their body temperature or to eat a meal. The cover often attracts their food source. Also, it wouldn't hurt to do some research on their habits. Understanding their behaviors may minimize encounters. For example, during the hottest months of the year, the cottonmouth becomes mostly nocturnal. To minimize human encounters, outside activities could be done during the middle of the day. This doesn't mean a snake can't be found, but the species in general should be inactive at that time.

Keeping a well maintained and clean yard, educating the family about the snake species, and keeping a careful watch on your surrounding environment when involved in outside activities, is the best advice I can give.

Hope everything works out.

Ryan

Trimming back all the grass up to the house, all the hedges and bushes so there is no ground cover, and removing and trash, logs, stumps, etc. Will keep most snakes out of the immediate vicinity of your house, or at the very least make them much more visible when they do show up. This inevitably will remove a lot of the habitat for thier prey as well.

A good trick would be to actually make suitable habitat in a place away from your house on a seperate part of the property where your child won't go. Leaving bruish piles, tin, logs and junk in an out of the way place will eventually attract snakes to that area, and away from your house.

Acquiring some Speckled Kingsnakes and releasing them around your house will also take care of this problem. Speckled Kings love to eat other snakes, including venemous species, such as baby Cottonmouths (which are harder to see and therefore more dangerous to a child). Also don't rule out teaching your child, even that young, which snakes to avoid.

For future reference Cottonmouths are fairly easy to manuver with a flat shovel or even a long stick. They are usually quite cooperative if you scoop them up and move them to a safer area.

Dave

All of the above are great points. I'll offer a final one that may/may not be feasible. Find an experienced herp enthusiast like one of us to come over and a) move the snake(s) unharmed to a remote part of your property or other suitable habitat nearby or b) take them away altogether to another suitable habitat. I don't want to get the "collect or not collect" or "catch and release is or isn't a good idea" thread started, but I tell people who hate or don't like snakes on their property to call me instead of chopping them up or smashing them with a shovel. It's a win-win-win for all 3 parties involved.

Evan

I lurk here every now and then but I thought I would respond to this.

We live 1/4 mile off the closest road, in a meadow surrounded by woods out in the country. When we first moved here, we found a couple of copperheads. Since then we have had dogs and cats and have had only a tiny snake (nonvenomous) in the yard one time. We've been here over 14 years now.

Yet I still have tons of birds. I've never seen my cats kill a bird. But I have seen them with lots of dead field mice and voles, and a rat once. I think the commotion that dogs and cats make is a good deterrent to snakes. Also, if there are mice, there are going to be snakes, and the cats take care of that problem too.

I'd get a med. to big size dog and a couple of cats, if I were you, in addition to the clearing you are doing.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned the first thing that comes to my mind--make sure you know what snakes you're looking at! I say this in large part because where I grew up in southern Indiana water moccasins are completely absent, yet you would still commonly hear people complaining about water moccasins in their yards, saying that they nearly got bit by one when they were out fishing, etc... as a result, I tend to take water moccasin reports in general with a rather large grain of salt.

Patrick Alexander

Patrick, i call them water mocassins, but in reality they are cotton mouths. i do see a lot of people refer to ALL snakes as either a rattler or a mocassin, but i usually know the difference. :)

i have 2 90 pound labs so they probably run off most of the snakes. i cannot stand cats, so i really do not want to go there.

as to the catch and release or catch and kill, i prefer they be moved elsewhere if possible, but either one is really fine with me. i am not worried about non-posionous snakes, although they probably would cause my wife to hurt herself if she came up on one.

hopefully this weekend i can get some more shrubs removed or shaped and burn a large limb pile. i think the biggest attraction for the snakes right now is the frogs around my house. hopefully i can get rid of the bugs, which will make the frogs go elsewhere, which in turn will cause the snakes to look elsewhere for food. i do not know if i mentioned it earlier, but both snakes had recently eaten rather large frogs. that is probably why they did not run off before i approached, they had their bellies full and just did not feel up to moving!

As I previously mentioned, leaving those brush piles in an out of the way area may be a better alternative to burning them. Brush piles will inevitably attract snakes and their prey to a safe area away from your child.

Also trimming all the foliage should keep the frogs at bay because you yard will be drier.

Dave

Got so much info from this one question. We are having such an increase this year in snakes. No one mentioned that they eat my little bird eggs!!
I keep my grass cut x2 a week, trim everything in sight, have found that at least I can see them, very clearly. I had written a post that a very large one fell from a tree in the front yard, my son said it was a king snake. That very day one of the Princes was found curled up in one of my bird feeder boxes..I am still around and getting better about screaming and running from them!!
Thanks for all of your help..and no Sulfa does not help..I bought "wallymart" out one year and all it did was stink and mess up my pretty grass!!

The snake in the tree was most likely a Ratsnake, since they are very arboreal and are also the most likely culprits when it comes to eating birds' eggs. Still, native birds and Ratsnakes have co-habitated successfully on this continent for millions of years, unlike imported predators, so snake predation won't have a noticeable effect on North American bird populations.

It's odd that you've had an increase in snakes. Most areas, at least those in which I have fellow snake enthusiasts that I keep in touch with, have experienced just the opposite. It stayed cooler than normal for much of the spring this year in SC, and only now are the snakes just beginning to be seen. I've only caught four snakes so far, three of them Black Ratsnakes and one small Corn. I haven't even seen many dead on the highways this year. I have some friends who also do snake removal, and they say their calls have numbered about 60% fewer than for this same time last year. Too bad you're too far away, otherwise we would be more than happy to come catch your snakes for you, venomous or not!

Sharon McKenzie

I have alot of personal experiences with cottonmouths. I live in the most densely populated area of cottonmouths in the world probly, we always hog hunted and had a pen full of wild hogs. Greenswamp has alot of hogs and cottonmouths. For 15 years or so we never saw snakes in our yard. We stopped hog hunting about 2 years ago, since then we have been killing and seeing cottonmouths on a regular basis. Wild hogs are a natural predator of cottonmouths, the snakes could smell the hogs in the pen and that kept them away. Im sure of this, so if your in the woods and can have a hog pen, get one a build it close to the swampy area, between your home and the swamp would be best. we just had a good dog bit and killed by a cottonmouth, 2 days earlier my 3 year old cousin came with in inches of stepping on one. We have saw several that we couldnt kill. I am totally convinced that we need to fill our hog pen back up. My name is Travis and if anyone has more questions give me a call. 863-450-7485. THANKS

I used to hunt wild hogs, too, Travis, and I will take a Cottonmouth over a rank boar ANY day of the year! Hogs are WAY more dangerous than any snake, and while you are correct that hogs will also eat any snakes, including venomous ones, most folks don't want to keep a pen full of hogs in their yard to keep the snakes away. Most of the snakes that folks see and call "Cottonmouths" are harmless Water Snakes, and I know this for an absolute fact, having gone and gotten many a snake out of someone's yard that they swore was a Cottonmouth or Rattler, and it was a harmless species. All snakes found in or near water aren't Cottonmouths. Many people CAN'T keep hogs, though, due to laws and zoning restrictions, and wild hogs are especially not going to work for most people, even farmers who have kept domestic dogs for years. It's like the difference in keeping a wolf and keeping a Labrador.

Best trap for snakes are minnow traps, very cheap, place around house foundation. Check often.