Awesome photo ! I never knew black snakes would eat each other either. Thanks for sharing. Scott

I looked into some pretty specific county level snake data and it appears that many of the DC area counties do support a few small isolated copperhead populations, so I retract my skepticism of your neighbor's id of the snakes (Looks like I need to go looking more the next time I'm visiting relatives in Montgomery County) Unfortunately I can't think of any vegetation that won't be a potentially attractive place for snakes. Even if you plant nothing at all, nature holds no guarantees so it's a matter of how important a slight reduction in risk of snakebite from very low to very very low is and how important having an attractive natural yard is.

Chances are that the Worm Snakes are abundant beneath the surface so while the ones you move may well take a while to get back others are likely to appear. Snakes can travel long distances so in theory they could come back eventually but whether they would bother or not is another story. I'd say if you're committed to the strategy you could try 100 yards or so and see what happens. But they're likely not doing any harm so it may not be worth the very minor effort of moving them.

pjb, Sometimes you cannot avoid them though. I know someone who was turning on his faucet and got bit. Someone I used to work with was doing laundry inside her home and reached down to get some clothes and got bit, they figure it came through the dog door. I went to turn the lights off in my garage one evening and turned the corner in my hallway and there was one (I didn't get bit). Several species of rattlesnake will give you the chance to retreat but some like the Mojave green are just plain nasty. In the 20 years we've lived here I have dispatched more rattlers than I care to think about. My 4yr old g-son was less than 1/2 ft from one. Luckily it was injesting and couldn't strike. DH was weeding one winter and touched the back of one- thank God it was lethargic from the cold. I went to get a sweater one night (7/4) from DH's truck- stepped down and heard a rattle. I had to wait in the dark until it rattled again and then I jumped the other way. That was a 3' diamondback- it was less than a foot away. BTW, that 2 year old I posted about last month. The child is Dr. Sean Bush's little boy. Dr Bush who lives about 1/2 mile from us is the ponytail venom doctor from the TV channel Animal Planet's "Venom ER" show. Jude saw the snake in their backyard and tried to pick it up. Dr Bush keeps snakes, spiders, scorpians etc in his garage (well contained) and Jude thinking this was one of his daddy's snakes that got loose wanted to help. If you ever got bit Dr Bush is the man you want to take care of you. In fact he is on call if President Bush (no relation) ever gets bit at his ranch in Crawford.