Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Snake Control

BD,

I can tell from 40 yards away, as I did this little female here.

The first pic:

http://webpages.charter.net/bobad/picture004a.jpg

shows the unmistakable white mouth. Mocassins simply open their mouth and quietly display. After the photo shoot, she quieted down, kept trying to crawl away, and completely quit offering to bite. How boring! This is typical mocassin behavior.

Common brown water snakes hiss, strike, posture, and really put on a fearsome show. A gravid female water snake is REALLY MEAN, and will actually chase you.

The second pic

http://webpages.charter.net/bobad/picture003a.jpg

clearly shows the pit, the vertical pupil, and the horny brow over the eye, which are unmistakable marks of pit vipers.

To all: Moccasins are wary and shy, and will dive in the water and disappear before you get within 20 yards of them. I have never seen more than 2 or 3 in a day. Do I like them? No. Am I afraid of them? No. There's just no reason to be afraid of them under normal circumstances.

I wonder how the number of people injured after SEEING a snake would compare to the number of people actually BITTEN by snakes. I know I just about jumped out of my skin when I nearly stepped on that copperhead and he lurched. I almost fell in the creek!

But it's too close to the house for poisonous snakes - they must be 'discouraged.'

The link to the thread and pictures was great, Alligator, and I think you're right. That guy that said the "only good snake or cat was a dead one" nearly caused me to register just to make a comment.

When we bought our land we made a trade for the old corncrib next door. It had about 40 years worth of empty feed, seed, & fertilizer sacks stored in it that my wife said she'd clean out. She spent most of a Sunday pitchforking the first half of the sacks out and burning them. When I asked why she was using a pitchfork, she said "Because of the Rats!"

That made me kind of queasy (I don't like Rats) but it didn't really phase her any. The next weekend, she headed back to the corncrib to finish & came out screaming about two minutes later. I asked if the Rats were back and she informed me they had all been eaten by the snakes now inhabiting the corncrib. There must have been about 2 dozen big black snakes about 4 feet long in there. Since it was safe (hey, the Rats were gone) I volunteered to finish cleaning it out.

Come on now, non carborundum bullshitimus.

You know you heard your wife's account of the black snakes and told your internet-savvy kid to go out and experience some nature. "Yes son, that's it. Go out and finish cleaning the corn-house!"

I've also had the frog population explosion but luckly I have seen way less snakes then in years past. It must be that they aren't having to travel as much with the food boom.

I have copperheads and haven't seen a WM here.

Okay, Sunil, you caught me!

The boy wasn't here yet then, but I think the crib actually sat for a week to let the snakes clear out before anyone went back in.

If you guys play it REALLY smart, snakes can be used for manly pursuits.

Take the very smart WC Fields for example. When confronted by a lady friend about a bottle of whiskey, he replied:

"Oh yaaas... of course... I keep that handy for medicinal purposes in case I get bit by a snaaake... which I also keep haaandy..."

i am kinda partial to the .357 revolver with the birdshot casings that are available in most gun shops. They really don't bother me too much, but the wife isn't fond of them...

I have invented a snake trap. Just dreamed it up, have not built or tested, but it should work.

After several times of flipping the aluminum boat over and finding multiple snakes under it, so much so that I now fear to turn it over and have a rope tied to the side of it to pull it over (and away) from a distance... It dawned on me that copperheaded rattlemoccasins like to crawl under stuff.

So I plan to take a piece of plywood, saw it in half, then put wire netting (wire cloth) around the periphery so that the two pieces of plywood make the top and bottom of a cage that is only about 3 or 4 inches high. In the sides (the wire cloth) make some funnels (like in the fish trap) to allow entry for snakes. So that they can go in but not back out.

A bit of internet research yields the idea that additional wire cloth placed around the trap could be used to steer snakes into it. I also found that you can buy "snake netting" which they try to crawl through and get tangled in, sorta like a gill net for fish.

Yea, it's a trap alright. Be careful there Nick, you may get what you wish for! That trap may actually work!

Just what do you propose to do with Mr. No-Soulders when you catch him? If you're a "humanitarian" and plan to re-locate them, may as well just kill them. That's because snakes often do not survive relocation. Snakes live in a world dominated by smell, and are literally lost when relocated. They get confused, stressed, and fall prey to cars, predators, and starvation.

If you plan to execute them, well, what do you propose to do with a bunch of stinking, rotting snake corpses?*** Sounds like way too much work for me! I rather just flop the boat over on a couple of saw horses and let the snakes go somewhere else for shade.(the grass will appreciate it too!.

***For some reason, dead shakes stink worse than dead fish, dead horses, and dead dogs combined.

Welp, gotta run. Dinner's nearly ready! :p

Throw the dead snakes into the water and the turtles eat them. Leave them on the shore and coons, coyotes, etc. get them. They don't last long.

Skin'em & tan their hides! They make nice hat bands, knife sheaths ect. I even saw the front of a bow covered with a copperhead ... looked great!

The "Mr. No Shoulders" comment is funny as hell though.

No problem. I realize snakes creep most people out. Hell I like snakes but get creeped out by spiders, go figure. To answer your question, they did pay a group of guys to go through south Georgia swamps, wearing protective gear of course, and provoke moccasins. They were found not to be as agressive as most people believed. But of course as with any species, not all of them will behave the same. Some of them may very well be mean as shit, but not all. From personal experience, all of them I have ever handled ran away first chance they got. I am sure some of them would have bitten while being handled had I given them the chance.

I had originally planned to throw the snake filled trap into the water for an hour or so. Then dump it behind the pond dam. Any "bad snake" should be converted to a "good snake" after the hours dunking and will no longer be a problem.

One nother thought, snakes eat fish. I dont know if you have ever seen a snake catch a fish, but those suckers can and do feed on your fish. So I do like to relocate them when possible. (I use the term "relocate" loosely, as in from breathing to non-breathing.)

I've got experience with the snake netting...only mine was bird netting I used to cover some tomato plants. One morning while pushing away branches and leaves to look for tomatoes, I scared the crap out of myself as I came face to face, and darn near hand to snake, with a 3' bull snake.

Kind of a related subject if you will. How many of you swim in your ponds/lakes knowing the snakes there somewhere. Just curious ?

Copperheads like living under the tarp covering my firewood pile. A few years ago I lifted the tarp and started to grab a log when noticed two full grown copperheads coiled up on my chopping block. (Yep, Copperheaded RattleMoccosins!) I jumped back and almost tripped over my splitting ax - I grinned - this was too easy - I was able to relocate both copperheads with one swing.
Generally, I like snakes and I leave them alone. I would rather have a couple blacksnakes in my garage than the darn mice. Only poisonous snakes get relocated.

In the past few days, I've seen a lot of snakes. Every trip around the pond turns up one or two, mostly brown water snakes. I saw a beautiful yellow and black snake that then went under the house while I was mowing, about a 3-4 footer. "Go get some mice!" I hollered after him. When I go working in the attic, I usually find a skin or two. Also quite a few in the crawl space. Too bad they don't eat skunks, maybe I should put a python under there. The other night the dog was raising hell at the back sliding door. Looked out and here was a 4 foot bull snake climbing the brick wall of the house, headed up to the attic. Very cool to see. But I agree with Jeff, they are welcome until I see something poisonous, then they get terminated with extreme predjudice!

Actually. according to most authori-
tative sources, the cottoemouth water
moccasin can reach a length of 6 feet
with an average of about 3.5 feet.
See www.pestproducts.com/cottonmouths.htm
The current known record length is 75.5".

I think that most snakes would rather retreat than stand and bite. Walk with a heavy step and many snakes will actually feel you coming and get out of the way before you ever see them. If they become too much of a neusance I would prefer to use steel shot around the pond in an effort to keep other animals from eating the small lead pellets.

Dang, squeeky, guess I had forgotten about the markings of the young version...saw one this weekend and didn't recognize it for a WM. Thanks for posting the link.

I've seen hundreds of moccasins, and none reached 4 feet. According to how heavy-bodied a 3-1/2 footer is (the "square-cube law"), a 6 footer would weigh about 30 pounds and could swallow a beagle. That's a scary thought!

Howdy ... a newbie here. I have 132 acres involving 3 separate properties. e have a total of 5 ponds on the properties. Three were existing but quite small (under 3/4 acre) when we bought the land last year. We've significantly expanded those three ponds and added two new ones averaging 5 acres.

I raise and train Labradors so my ponds were designed with retriever training and duck hunting in mind.

Oh, I forgot to mention ... I HATE snakes! One was foolish enough to enter one of our dawg runs last Tuesday evening around 9:30. An eight month old female Lab alerted me to something being awry by her barking. I flipped on the kennel area lights and saw a 3-1/2 foot snake in a corner of the concrete run area.

Got the dawg out of the way and bang-bang, a GOOD snake. Took the pic the next morning. 44" of dead non-venomous rat snake (I think) together my .357 loaded with CCI rat shot.

Here's one of our ponds. The one closest to the new home we just built. The dawgs obviously enjoy the water, regardless of it's size!