Connie, If you are willing to stand there and chop up a snake with a hoe, you're braver than me! I had neighbors in Texas that used to do that when I was a kid, and these were ladies who screamed if they saw a spider! And, as far as the hoe being pricey, I have found that buying good-quality equipment pays off in the long run as it lasts far longer. Nowadays I buy all my rakes, hoes, shovels, etc. at Sears and get the Craftsman brand, because they come with a lifetime guarantee and Sears really does replace them if they break. I do the same thing with water hoses. Those big black heavy-duty water hoses from Sears have a lifetime guarantee, and Sears replaced one last year after my husband ran over it with the lawn tractor. :) And, Steffie, I ALWAYS watch my feet when I am working around the place. I've become more cautious over the years after almost stepping on rattlesnakes in the garden numerous times. During snake season, it never fails.....I'll be walking across a paved parking lot at someplace like a mall or a Wal-Mart and my husband will notice I'm watching my feet as I walk, you know, watching for snakes! It is a hard habit to break once established. I have rubber boots but I want some of the snakeproof boots and snakeproof pants I've seen at Cabella's. I have a neighbor who's lived here all his life and he wears snake chaps on his legs when he's working in brush or tall grass. Still, you know, all of us are more likely to be bitten on the hand or arm while gardening, statistically speaking. One of the reasons I mulch everything so heavily is that it cuts down on weeding and, presumably, on my chance of being bitten while weeding. I hate reaching into a shady mixed border of small trees, shrubs and ground covers in the summer months because you never know what will be in there! Alan, I can't believe you were trying to pick a fight with a water moc! We have lots of them in our four ponds and they are very aggressive, as you know. We leave them alone in the three big ponds, but if they get in the lily pond that sits between the house and the barn, we remove them. (In a nice way if possible, like with a rake or by firing a gun at them and not hitting them.) If they won't leave in a nice way, my DH shoots them. We walk by the pond dozens of times a day and all our animals like to hang out around it, so we can't put up with snakes that close to us and the house. To be fair to the snakes, most of the copperheads and rattlesnakes just want to get away from us as badly as we want to get away from them. One night my son, who was about 18 or 19 at the time, stepped out of his car after dark and stepped right on a copperhead. It startled him, but it didn't bite him. The cottonmouths are a whole different story, though, and we all steer clear of them. We got 3.5" of rain here and had some minor street flooding. Even my raised beds have been pretty wet, but might be dry enough in a day or two for me to work in them. They drain fairly fast. Dawn

David said "do you have any problem with those White Brook Tilapia reproducing in your tanks? Curious because thats often a problem, and I see they sell a mixed lot of males and females, the males growing considerably faster. Do you find the same?" A: If kept in high densities, spawning is extremely rare. The few that still manage to usually lose most of the fry to predation by the other adults in the tank. Another way to prevent spawning with mixed sex fish is to grow them in cages in the tanks. With larger mesh floors, they have nowhere to nest. If spawning is prevented or mostly prevented, the females will grow ALMOST as fast as the males, but they will still lag slightly. In my experience, even in lower density situations, these fish typically don't start spawning until 5 months of age, just a month shy of harvesting anyway. It is mostly a non-issue on a 6 month harvest cycle. David said "What temperature range is the water in your tanks, and do you need to do any supplementary heating or cooling? Reason I ask is that over 5-6 months, getting the water up to 75-80º might add a significant amount of weight, and you might accomplish that by some hillbilly engineering." A: I start fry out inside until they reach about 3 inches in plain old aquariums usually. I keep them at 80-84 degrees. 82 seems to be the sweet spot with them. Outside, my tanks will range from 72 in the spring to about 90 in the heat of summer, and then back down to about 68 in the late fall when I do my final harvesting for the year. I use a somewhat earth sheltered greenhouse for most of them, which helps to regulate temps a great deal. I usually overwinter about 500 fry minimum every year, but sometimes up to 1500 when I'm feeling up to it. David said "When I did this commercially, we raised them in either fixed or floating cages. Cram them in around 250 per cubic yard and feed them a high-calorie supplement with 15% protein, they'd filter the algae in the water coming through the cages and get supplementary protein and all the vitamins and such." A: As long as you start them out when young on a high protein diet, they will do good in such a situation. I have friends who simply stock them in their fishing ponds every year, and they don't even feed them. The fish simply browse on the diatoms, algae, vascular plant life and inverts already in the pond. They harvest some impressive fish in the fall when temperatures drop. The tilapia get lethargic and just hang out at the water surface making them easy to net up or cast net for them. David said "dollar a piece for a 1/2 inch fingerling. Wow. Linked is an article about large scale fry production, I did all the stuff in Cote d'Ivoire, the Campbell, D. in the references. I used to have to deal with some taxonomical geeks - no matter what they call it, its all the same species of nile tilapia" A: I buy some new stock just about every year to keep genetic diversity where it should be, but it doesn't require buying a ton of fish to do that (50 a year works fine). After I established my initial "colony" of fish, cost of stock has become largely irrelevant to my overall production costs. Sometimes I will buy a very large number of fish to stock (500+), and when I do that I buy at wholesale prices which are far less than what they ask for on small lots. Your last comment about "no matter what they call it, it's all the same species of nile tilapia" I'm unsure of what you mean. There are numerous strains within Oreochromis Niloticus that are VASTLY different. Recent studies have even shown that they carry different sex determinant markers (A good study from UMD is out there as well as one from Virginia Poly off the top of my head). This is generally indicative of distinctly separate evolution of various communities of fish (usually prolonged geographical separation), even if they are in the same species. In this case, one could quite easily argue that there are numerous subspecies of Niles (and other tilapia as well of course), and that many of them have quite different traits and requirements.

Wow that is a nasty bite. I was thinking about this (people not realizing they were bitten) and there are some people who have neuropathy (nerve damage) from diabetes or other diseases that might not realize they were bitten if a lot of venom wasn't injected for whatever reason. They might not feel the initial pain of the bite but the effects of the venom as they became ill. I got bit by a brown recluse spider one time and didn't know I was bit until the ulcer showed up. I don't have any reason for getting an ulcer on my leg and I was young and healthy. Then I remembered seeing the recluse spider when I was moving some boxes in our basement. Luckily it healed okay. It is common not to feel recluse bites though. Some people are allergic or get infections from them though and that's when the trouble starts. ~sjn

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!