With all the water everywhere in Oklahoma, this guy had to come to your swimming pool to find a place to swim? Amazing.

Great ID, okoutdoorsman!

We used to have these in our big pond back before too many years of recurring drought dried up the spring that fed it. Until this year, the big pond had been empty 98% of the time since 2007, though it did hold water for a few weeks after the big downpours of April-June 2009 and June 2013. Our dog, Biscuit (now deceased for several years), would swim for hours in that pond, up to the point where I worried he'd exhaust himself and drown. He loved that pond and didn't mind sharing it with the watersnakes. The diamond-backed watersnakes would swim around him. You'd know they were there in the pond with him because they swim with the heads and part of their bodies held up out of the water much of the time.

I imagine snakes will continue to show up in places where you might not expect them for some time since a lot of their habitat has been underwater. The biggest problem I'm hearing about is happening in town where copperheads are occasionally popping up on someone's porches.

Thank you outdoorsman!

Dawn, It is shocking a bit considering we have a huge drainage ditch, albeit concrete, right beside our property that is full of water right now. The runoff that fills it passes 2 good size ponds first so it probably came from there. I have frogs that sing the night away around our pool and it was probably looking for a snack. I think they all just like the clean water in my pool

I do have to admit and I hope the snake lovers dont get too mad but I did dispose of it. It was late at night, I had no idea if it was a snake to be concerned about and I didnt want it to come back knowing my kids would be swimming today and risk one of them getting bit.

Had I known last night it was relatively harmless I would have made a different decision.

mike

Mike, Well, the important thing is that you made the most prudent decision you could make at the time in order to keep your children safe. No one can fault you for that. A parent always must put their children's safety first, and err on the side of safety even if it means, in the absence of a positive ID, that a non-venomous snake has to die. It is really easy for someone not facing that decision to criticize your decision after the fact, but I hope nobody does that because it isn't fair. This is doubly true if your children are small. There are many non-venomous snakes that look very similar to venomous snakes and even act like them at times (for example, a chicken snake trapped in a chicken coop with a human will thump its tail up and down against the floor or wall and try to convince the human it is a rattlesnake----I've seen that first-hand). A child may see their parent set a non-venomous snake free, and then that child might encounter a look-alike venomous snake and think it is the same kind of snake and get bitten. So, no one should fault you for trying to keep the pool area snake-free for your kids' safety.

We have 14.4 acres and our own informal rule is that any snake on the acre nearest the house (except the rough green tree snakes that do not resemble anything venomous we have here) must die. They can roam the other 13.4 acres and that's fine, but if they are up around the house, outbuildings, yard or garden, we shoot them. Does that mean that sometimes non-venomous snakes die. Yes. But, it also means we leave them 13+ acres to roam, which is not a bad compromise. And, sometimes we don't shoot them. Sometimes if they are just garter snakes or something, Tim picks them up and carries them far away from the civilized 1-acre and releases them. If they are rat snakes or chicken snakes, they have to die. We have had years when rat snakes and chicken snakes have gotten into the chicken coop repeatedly (the doors are open because the chickens free-range all day) and eaten every egg, ever small chick, and even half-grown chicks and keats. Back them, Tim wanted to catch and release the rat and chicken snakes but sometimes they'd almost make it back to the coop before he did, so it didn't make sense to keep releasing them so they could come right back and eat another chicken. You just have to develop your own snake policy that fits your lifestyle as well as the ages of your children. A 2-year-old child here in our county got bitten by a rattlesnake a couple of years ago and had to be air-evac'd to a Level 1 Trauma Center. You don't want for your children to ever go through that sort of experience.

As for them leaving the drainage channel, I imagine it has had water running more swiftly than they like, so your pool (and the visiting frogs) were just too attractive to ignore.

I'm going to link an OK Snake website for you. You can access it quickly online in case you want to try to make an instant on-the-spot ID before deciding what to do. It is a terrific website, but let me add this caution: all snakes of a given type do not look the same. We get tons of timber rattlers and there's a lot of variation in the darkness/lightness of their skin and even in their pattern. It drives me crazy, but we have so many, I've gotten pretty good at ID'ing them from a safe distance. And, in this particular instance, the timber rattlers (locally called velvet-tails because of the color and texture of their rattles) always seem to have the rattles that are a velvety-black so that makes it easier for me to be sure of the ID. I've also seen lots of variation with copperheads, and even quite a bit with western diamondback rattlesnakes. So, if it doubt, we kill them. I am surprised by how many atypical venomous snakes we have encountered over the years.

Anyone who doesn't like our snake policy as applied on our property? They can stay out of it because they do not live on our place and walk in our shoes, and I feel strongly about that. It is easy for a snake-lover to tell someone what to do or not to do or what they should have done, but they are not standing here on our property with a snake in the dark.......so they cannot say what they will do in that instance. You just make the best decision you can make at that point in time. That's all you can do.

Two people have been bitten by copperheads on the property next door to ours (the first a few years before we moved here and the second time a couple of years after we moved here), and I don't think anyone should have to go through what they went through. People have a right to be safe on their own property.

On the below website, you can click on the name of any snake to read more about it and see enlarged photos or more photos.

Oklahoma Snakes

Thanks for all that Dawn. Glad you have a NO snake zone. I have an 16,11 and 2 year old and they were all I was thinking about. Had i ran across it out in the way back I may have just relocated him but seeing how it took a liking to the pool it just had to be done. Plus i just dont have enough experience and knowledge to say what it an non or venomous snake is. Im sure the food chain wasnt damaged to bad.

i did find that site late last night when I had it pinned to try and ID but like you said they can all seem different and I just couldnt say yes or no. plus the fact that the water had been so high and I know the area where the water comes from made me nervous as to what it could have been.

Mike

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

Dawn, I'm just like you with snakes. If it is in the area I keep mowed then it has a death sentence. But a venomous snake in the pasture around my cattle are also fair game. Snakes in the pond are also. I eat fish and they are my fish, not the snakes and birds. I paid to stock it so I get pretty stingy with my fish when critters are concerned.

I have a phobia about snakes. I learned recently that non venomous snakes have round eye pupils and venoumous have eliptical (cat like) eyes. Will I remember that if I encounter one in the garden? Doubt it. When I was in high school, someone put a huge dead snake in my car.

A friend of my husband called him the other day and started describing a snake that he had in his garage. He couldn't find anything to kill it with and it got away from him. He thought he had it locked in the garage but he couldn't find it again. The next morning as he came out of the shower, the snake was in his bedroom floor. He lives near the center of Grove.

Robert, I don't blame you at all. If I paid to stock fish in a pond, I wouldn't want any critter in there eating them either.

Amy, I have a huge snake phobia, and very understanding friends who are willing to run right over and shoot a snake....because I rarely have a gun with me, and I learned long ago that if I run indoors to grab a gun, the snake will not be sitting there waiting for me to come back out and shoot it. I laugh now at the thought that I once believed the snakes would be waiting for me to come back. They never are.

When I see a snake, it upsets me so much I can barely dial my phone....if I have it with me, and I try to always have it with me, but sometimes I make it outside without the phone anyway. If I call one of the guys who comes and handles the snakes for me and I can barely speak, they know I have a snake and come rushing right over. I don't even know where the snake phobia came from but feel like it has gotten worse, not better, with repeated exposure to more venomous snakes over time. On the other hand, I no longer freak out so much about non-venomous ones unless they're trying to eat my chicks.

Carol, That is so horrible. One of the guys that Tim works with sent him a photo a couple of years ago. It showed the head of a snake popping up out of the shower drain while the guy was taking a shower. It freaked him out, but he didn't freak out so much that he forgot to take a photo of it. I wouldn't have been standing there taking a photo....I would have been running screaming from the bathroom, after carefully closing the door. Snakes do not belong indoors....ever.

I read a news article tonight about an experienced snake handler who got bit by a baby copperhead and had to have 16 vials of antivenin (aka antivenom). That sure sounds like a lot. If I can remember where I read it, I'll find it again and link it. I believe the fact that it was a baby is the reason he needed 16 vials. Baby snakes over-react and go into "overkill" mode and release a lot of venom. More experienced, older snakes don't release as much venom as they know to save some for the next time they feel threatened.

I actually have seen just about the fewest snakes ever in my garden so far, but that might be because it rained practically every day in May so I wasn't out there in the garden as much as usual. This week in the better weather I've been outdoors a lot more and still I've only seen two snakes, or maybe 3. That's not so bad.

Dawn

Man Bitten By Snake Monday in Collin County, TX