I had to walk back to the house to get my phone for that picture - snake had not moved. I did about another 30 minutes of setup to do the roof, leaving the ladder for last, thinking the snake would move ... nope, still there. At this point, I touched its tail a couple of times with a plastic rake, figuring that would get it moving - nope. I finally got a metal rake that had space between the tines. It took a couple of tries, but I was finally able to pick it up off the ladder & the snake got a ‘ride’ to the ground on the rake. It was in no hurry to move along, but finally crawled off towards my bags of pine needles. I suspect I will be seeing it again.
There are some bird nests in the barn & I think the snake had its eye on one of them.
I never thought of this: Even if the bird nests are not accessible to the snake, would it hang around waiting to see if an egg or a baby bird fell out of the nest? When you are practiced at going a week or two between meals...
Well, as long as its placid and eats small destructive animals (excluding birds) I suppose that makes it a good animal neighbor.