I am interested, though my garden is young have a few things to share- arums. epimedium, toad lily.. can you tell I have a shady yard..and I would only have a few snippets of mentioned plants. But I would love to build a network. And I have a ton of hellebore seedlings, but don't know if anyone wants to nurse these for four years! spring!

That picture is good enough for a definitive identification. Your snake is a juvenile black rat snake or juvenile gray rat snake. Oak snake is the common local name for gray rat snakes. Juvenile black rat snakes and gray rat snakes both look like gray rat snakes and the gray rat snake maintains its pattern throughout its life while black rat snakes lose their distinctive patterning and become all black with a white underside as they age and get larger. Given your location in northeast Georgia it is more likely to be a juvenile black rat snake or an intergrade between the black and gray rat snake. In any rate it is most definitely a rat snake. They are harmless.

"I've had no experience with queen snakes." I understand, and I think that this is also true of the others who are calling it a Queen Snake. For Mike and I, who have each seen many, many Queen Snakes and many, many Gartersnakes, it is painfully obvious that this is a Gartersnake. "that lighting and color in photography can be misleading" I see your point very well. But...the camera is not playing tricks here. It shows a dorsal stripe and red banding because they do indeed exist. "...and never seen such a patternless species whether in shed or not" But which is more likely, a Gartersnake with some pattern lacking? or a Queen Snake with a Garter-esque head, dorsal stripe, red-banding, and found far from water? "That being said, I can't be sure of the species." That's really great to hear someone say. I'm glad that someone can admit that they're not "100% sure" it's a Queen Snake, because it is not. This is a Gartersnake. -Todd ...oh, and to keep it interesting, here's a real Queen Snake found a few days ago in western Indiana.

Thanks both of you for the id. I've got lots of snakes around here so I'll be posting more pics soon. I don't think any of them are poisonous. I'd just like to learn what they are and try to get over my fear of them... Thanks again! Michelle