That house was a snake hibernicula and it makes me not only feel sorry for the occupants, but the snakes who depend on dens for surviving the winters. There is one state, and I forget which, where their local garter is going extinct mostly because they are killed by humans. No, I don't expect the family to have to co-exist with hundreds of snakes but neither did I appreciate they killed over a hundred harmless garter snakes when they knew full well what they were getting into. I have a garter snake up in one of my g'houses now. It has decided that laying on the benches daily is a good thing to do and I work around wherever it happens to sun itself. Last year it was a big rat snake who lived there. I also have a resident black snake in the cellar and we just watch what we pick up. Obviously I am not afraid of them and appreciate their role in prey/predation. No, I don't relocate them. We did remove any delapidated outbuildings on our property so they wouldn't be drawn to occupy structures near the house. It's rare now to have one 'get in' the house and if one does, my husband leaves it to me to pick it up and remove it. LOL.

My strategy would be to do what I can in the area that I have control over. The snakes seem to have their living quarters set up off your property (no control). They need space and prey to forage(you have some control). Establish a clear perimeter inside your property boundary. Mow a 10 foot swath and trample it regularly (daily if possible) . Don't ask me why but snakes hesitate to cross a path trampled by humans. Get rid of prey (toads?) and water sources. I had a pond in my backyard and my neighbor across the street allowed his pet python to escape. Three days later that python surprised the 'shaving cream' out of me at the pondside. I am deathly afraid of the snake that sees me FIRST. Trample heavily as you walk, walk slowly and swish a stick from side to side on the ground as you do so. You will allow the animal to retreat to safety in its harbor. I have one radical, last resort measure which I would try. Dogs mark their territory effectively with a particular bodily fluid. I would imitate their strategy by doing the same starting near the harbor. My sincere apologies to those readers who might find this last suggestion offensive but I really believe that collection and dispersal does not have to trangress the legal and moral standards of decency and that it would be effective.

Nothing will repel a hungry snake no matter what kind of marketing stuff gets posted to our forum. Sandplum, Our son stepped out of his car one evening in summer, after dark but in the lighted area near the security light, and found his foot on top of a copperhead which did not, miraculously, bite him. He hollered "Copperhead!" at us and stepped back into the car, since only that one leg was all the way out of the vehicle. We were sitting in lawn chairs chatting with some friends. That snake, had it chosen to turn and go back into the neighbor's pasture from whence it came, could have and would have lived. Instead, it chose to head straight for the lawn furniture we were sitting upon. Maybe it wanted to seek refuge under the furniture. Big mistake. Tim shot it. I felt kinda bad about that since the snake hadn't even bitten Chris when it certainly had the opportunity, but there's no way we're going to sit there chatting in the yard while a venomous snake prowls around our feet. I hate snakes as much as you do. Dorothy, I wonder where the garter snakes went? We've never had a year that was free of garter snakes and I've already had one in the garden this year. Tim picked it up and carried it far from the garden and released it. I don't mind the garter snakes or rough green tree snakes, but venomous snakes automatically get killed if they venture into our people/animal space and I'm not going to apologize for that. We used to even catch and release rat snakes and chicken snakes, but they just keep coming back to the poultry coops over and over again, feasting on eggs and chicks, so they get the death penalty too if they are in or near the chicken coops. The only good venomous snake is a dead one. We live in too much of a wilderness area to ever be snake-free, and they serve the important function of controlling rodents, but I'm still not going to share yard and garden space with the venomous ones. Our little puppy dog, Princess, who is about six months old now, got bitten by something, probably a snake, in the dog yard last week. It likely hit her inside her mouth so I imagine she bent down low to the ground and tried to pick it up. Her mouth and snout started swelling up something awful immediately and she was in pain and whimpering, so off to the vet we went for a steroid shot. Since even the vet couldn't find fang marks, we'll never know for sure if it it was a snake or some sort of insect, but knowing our snake history, I suspect it was a snake. Our cat, Casper, had seen a snake a short distance from the dog yard several weeks ago (long before I would have thought snakes were active) and he tried to get it, then jumped back away from it, so I suspect it struck at him but missed him. With Princess, the swelling began going down as soon as she got the shot (and some Benadryl) and we continued to give her Benadryl for 48 hours thereafter to keep the swelling down. She's fine now and I hope she learned her lesson about messing with snakes. I would expect the snakes are really getting out and moving more now that we are having sunshine and warmer temperatures, but I haven't seen a lot of them yet. Keep in mind that to my way of thinking, even one snake is one too many. I've run over copperheads with the lawn mower that I never even saw before I hit them. I'm just glad I hit them with the mower instead of stepping on them. I know people who have been bitten by venomous snakes, including our next-door neighbor, and it was a horrible ordeal for them. The recovery is not easy and complications can last for months afterwards. We had tons of copperheads in our early years, but in more recent years we see them a lot less. Unfortunately, the situation is reversed with the timber rattlers. We didn't see too many of them in our earliest years here, but for about the last 10 years, we see higher numbers of timber rattlers every year. Last year was the worst ever and it is a miracle I wasn't bitten by one because I had way too many close calls where I came within inches to 2' to 3' of timber rattlers before seeing them. For a while I was seeing them almost daily. The one that was within a few inches of my foot was very small. Had it been larger, I might have been in trouble.

Hey DBD, and thank you so much for your answers.. Do you think that bump will ever disappear?? I will go and buy that fish filet.. Thanks again Susanne(SUE)