Posted on 05/14/2011 4:05:00 PM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets
Does anyone know the species? He's sitting across the road from our driveway and my wife is terrified of him. Yeah, that's the ticket, he scares my wife. He's HUGH and SERIES, almost three feet long!
We enclosed our front porch, I took out the full length glass and place the screen in leaning the glass against furniture inside the door. I saw a black snake on top of the stand, called my husband and he said I suppose you want me to move it. Well duh!! He tried sliding it into a bucket but couldn’t move the four foot devil. The result was chopping him into pieces with a Lord of the Rings sword from my son’s collection. I got grief from coworkers about how the snakes keep mice away but rat poison works so well.
Dare I ask how you know this?
Easy. He pulled its pants down.
(Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all decade.)
An old Mennonite guy once told me that on the farm he grew up on he and his brothers used to grab black snakes by the tail and snap them like towels in a locker room. Killed the snakes instantly.
One time I was standing down by the creek in the front of my property in hip waders and a big black water snake like the one pictured shot right between my feet. He moved faster than I would have expected.
Down at that same creek my brother thought he saw a snake’s tail sticking out of a hole along the bank and when he grabbed it and pulled it out it turned out to be a muskrat.
Here’s one for you - and will give your wife the heebie-geebies.....that exact looking snake was in the trunk of my car for a couple of days.
We moved to another area of town - near a river - and I took all my stuff out of the trunk and into the garage to move stuff back and forth for the move.
After we moved -I put all my stuff (work bags,etc.) back into the trunk.
So, I’m at a job and had to put stuff in my trunk and had a few people there helping.....we started loading stuff into the trunk and I touched something warm and backed off and looked - and there it was - a 3 1/2-4 ft coiled snake in my trunk that looks like your snake picture.
Um, I’m not going near it again, so I got someone who (thank goodness)liked the Crocodile Hunter to get it - he grabbed it by the tail and walked it out to a drainage ditch - that sucker was flailing away trying to get him. The guy was giddy - the rest of us were freaking out....
I proceeded to tear the car apart before I went on my ‘once innocent’ merry way - no other snakes were found. I hate snakes!
I don’t think it was poisonous but that guy was big. We’ve had diamond headed snakes near the house but this one had a smooth head.
We even had a garter snake IN the house - I chopped that sucker up so quick with a Ginzu knife he didn’t know what hit him - each piece wiggled even after it was chopped- gross-gross-gross.
My DH likes snakes - I want them all D-E-A-D - dead!
I think she's hunting for Red October and Captain Ramius......
No, that’s no king, sorry. Shading and markings are all wrong.
Northern Water Snake. Lucky sighting. I’ve lived in Massachusetts all my life, and chased snakes since I was a boy, and never even seen one.
Leave it alone; it keeps rats and other pests in check, and is harmless to humans as long as you don’t play around with it.
Which explains why my wife would not even consider moving to Florida. I was suprised that he got in, (the garden snake in 1989, not this guy). It had a poured concrete foundation in good repair and no obvious gaps in any of the doors or windows. We had looked at a much older house with field stone basement and no motar, basically a rubble pile. You would more or less expect snakes in there as a matter of course.
Just shoot the thing. And if you can’t do that, for what ever reason, thank God yur wife has the smarts to run it over.
It’s not on my property, and you cannot shoot in this town without the property owner’s permission. (It might actually be on state property, it’s just off Route 111.) I think it’s more than 500 feet from any dwelling, but it’s still too close to the road, since I think you have to 75 feet off the road to shoot. I have a “live and let live” additude with nature; every creature has his place and these things don’t hurt anyone.
The cat used to bring in her trophies for me. Once though, the trophy was alive. It was writhing and twisting all around her. She dumped it in the middle of the living room. Since I don't keep hoes in the house, I did debate on the shot gun but decided that wasn't a good idea. He (or she, I didn't take the time to look and didn't bother to check the eyes) met the the bottom of my old cast iron skillet a few times. I scooped it up in the skillet and left it outside the door for hubby to despose of. The cat immediately became a inside cat (I can hardly type for her, lol). Years ago, we went out to the old farm place. It had been a long drive out there so first thing mother ran to the bathroom. She ran back out screaming there was a snake in the toilet. We went in there but didn't see anything. It was an old toilet so was all rusty in the bottom and the floor was shaky with everyone walking around so it must have been the light reflecting on the wiggly water. She kept on and on about it so grandpa poured some gas in it (gas was his solution for everything). Mother still kept going on and on so I went in and made myself comfortable on the floor and propped my head on the seat to watch. All kinds of nasty started bubbling up so I stuck my head in further and WOOSH! Here he came! Hit me in the forehead! I was outta there in a split second and on the living room coffee table. Mother was on the couch. Grandpa was in the kitchen yelling, "Someone shut the door!" Mother, who is miss prim and proper, yelled back, "You shut the ^%#%^ door, @#^&$$!!" The old house had settled so much over the years, and I don't think the door ever fit, but there was a 5 inch gap so when he finally got the door shut the danged thing keep coming out. It was 6 feet long and fat (must have been female, huh). It was going crazy from the gas and was climbing the walls and falling from the ceiling, then back across to the door and into the hall and points beyond. Grandpa finally got the hoe and that was that. I don't think mother every went to the potty there ever again. Another time, I was out at the old farm place. I was leaving and had an arm load of wire clothes hangers. A storm was blowing up so I was trying to get out fast. No one lived there so I was trying to get the old skeleton key to turn and get the padlock on and all the while the wind was blowing my hair in my face and trying to knock the hangers down and I was fighting with the screen door that kept blowing against me. I kept kicking the screen door back but it somehow got caught on my jeans leg. Finally, I got the locks done and was bending down to unhook the screen from my leg. It wasn't the screen. It was a racer! First cousin of the one in the bathroom and just as big. He (or she - again, I didn't take the time to investigate) had done a figure eight around my legs!!! I don't know how but one second I was on the porch and a millisecond later I was outside the gate and in the turnaround. I hadn't dropped a single hanger. If I had, it'd still be there. When I was little, I was shelling peas on the porch and mooing to the cows. Nice sunny warm day. Not a care in the world until I looked up face to face with a rattlesnake. Peas went everywhere. Granny wasn't pleased - 1) my screams scared the thing off so she couldn't kill it and 2) no peas for dinner. Then there was my current house (the cat and the living room house) when we pulled into the garage. As I was getting out, I nearly stepped on a snake. I ran screaming into the house and slammed the door. Problem was, I'd left my child out there. That time I did check to see that it wasn't poisonous but still ran. Hubby grabbed the hoe that was the end of that one. Kiddo was ok. Did that give you enough "snake in the house" stories to get you moved? LOL! Sorry, couldn't resist. Oh, then there was the time I was walking down the dark hallway and stepped on something that went, "squeak"... ok, I'll stop, lol.
We found one in the garage a few weeks ago. Before we decided what to do with it, we took a picture, covered it with a box and tried to ID it.
It was a toss up so we killed it. Actually, my husband kiled it while I said not to leave snake splatter on the driveway.
I remember reading a story about servicemen in Vietnam. When they came on a snake,some would yell SNAKE and everyone would scatter, with some running into trees.
The only good snake is a dead snake.
It was a sight to behold.
Wow. Just wow. I would have had a heart attack and died. In early April, went out the front door to get the mail. Have three or four steps to go down. I didn’t see him until I was stepping over him but there was a garter snake laying on the sidewalk up against the last step. He raised up his head as I stepped over him. I nearly broke my neck trying to get away and was terrified that he would strike and get his fangs stuck on the hem of my jeans. Had that happened, I probably would have peeled my clothes off to get away cause there is no way in &^%% I would touch it. Had to stand in the driveway over twenty minutes throwing stuff at it to get it to move on so I could get back in the house.
I thank God for your wife.
Yeah. Once he sees how you deal with an innocuous little moth, he's outta there!
Epic...did you devise a suitably horrific name for the demon?
(Confession, I'd have done the same only it'd likely been a WW1 bayonet or a Leatherman on a long stick.)
Ewww, can't stand snakes. I wouldn't have gone up the steps either.
Last summer, hubby was clearing out some brush in the yard and had on flip flops. Told him to put on shoes. A little cottonmouth bit him on the foot. He came in and showed me the fang marks but he refused to go to the hospital. He got lucky that it was a dry bite.
Just this evening, the neighbors came by as I was working in the garden and told me to put on shoes and gloves because they had killed some small cottonmouths. I tip toed around an then cut back some of the big squash leaves that were wandering in the pathway.... shivers....
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