This past Wednesday was a traumatic day. I know everyone has a snake story, and having lived in the woods for the past 44 years I have several. Here are some. Shortly after we moved into our house we had the concrete floor poured in the garage. That night a snake decided to slither in on the fresh concrete. I watched for an hour and a half and he finally crawled out of the garage. Skip forward a few years when our kids were little, I happened to glance toward our fireplace and thought the kids had been playing with a long bow and had laid it in the corner by the fireplace. Then it moved. Not knowing what kind of snake it was I put the kids up on the kitchen table so I could deal with the snake. It just so happened that in that corner on the floor was a tray with rat poison pellets. The snakes tail was twitching and shaking that tray so we first thought it was a rattlesnake. Turned out to be a scarlet king snake. Then there was the time I was going to rake the leaves in the yard. I started in one spot and uncovered a snake. I moved to another spot and uncovered another one. So I decided to rake in another spot and uncovered the third snake. I then decided to burn the leaves and grass too. By the way all three were small green snakes. Fast forward several years. Jason was headed to Millsaps college in Jackson, MS. We had propped open the garage door as we were loading up everything he was taking. As I walked into the house I noticed the last 6 inches of a tail going under the door and into a sofa that was waiting to be loaded. We searched all in the sofa but could not get the snake to come out. I stayed up all night waiting to see if he came out, but he never did. They decided to take the couch anyway figuring the snake was not in there. So they loaded it on the truck and drove the 5 hours to Millsaps, up two flights of stairs into their apartment. The next morning they found the snake in their shower. Of course they said it was a cottonmouth. Not real sure about their ID. Skip forward several years. We added a swimming pool in the back yard. Finished in December so the next spring even before the water was warm enough to swim in, a small snake decided to swim in it first. Since then we have had snakes in the pool quite often. Usually they are small, about 12 inches. Until about a week ago when the one below was in the pool. I was in the pool floating around and glanced into the filter and it looked like something was in there. I had failed to check the filter before I got into the pool. I will not make that mistake again. As I went to remove the cover this snake came out:
This is an eastern Kingsnake. By far the largest snake in the pool yet. That brings us up to last Wednesday. I took the dog out in the backyard to do his business when he starts barking. I quickly noticed that he was squared off with a large kingsnake. Trying to get the dog away I grabbed the garden hose and started squirting the dog and the snake. I got the dog away and kept squirting the snake until he crawled under our backyard fence and into the woods. Meanwhile the dog goes back to where the snake was. Then I hear him yelp and looked and this is what I see:
I quickly got the dog into the house and checked to see if he had been bitten. Luckily the snake did not bite him. Had he been bitten he would probably have died. The snake is a timber rattler. In my excitement of trying to get the dog away from the kingsnake I never even saw this one. I now think that the kingsnake was going to make a meal out of the rattlesnake and we broke that up. It is possible that the kingsnake had already wrapped around this snake and was in the process of killing it when we disturbed it. That would explain why I did not see it to start with. There is now one less rattlesnake to come back into my yard. The traumatic part is that this occurred right under my birdfeeders where I stand to fill them up. I had just used the weedeater under the feeders the day before. Now I'll be uncomfortable going outside for a couple of weeks and be very careful looking all around the yard. I do not fear the snake I can see, it is the ones I can't see that I am really afraid of. Being partially color blind, snakes are sometimes hard for me to see. Until next time....
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