This has been snake month at our Bull Creek cabin. We were having dinner there when we suddenly heard three loud "snaps" in 5 seconds. Back in the closet with the water heater and well pump where pipes come up through the floor, we have frequent rodent visitors. In this case though it was a 5 foot black rat snake that got caught in three rat traps. Here it posed for pictures before moving to the barn where it will be hunting from now on.
Our next guests called us from across the creek reporting a snake with "Hershey Kisses" on the walk. They had stepped off the porch headed to the ATV but were stopped by the 24" copperhead curled up on the walk. Ordinarily I would use my snake grabber to transplant it but in this case if I missed it would crawl back under the porch steps and our guests probably wouldn't come out the door from a week. I was forced to execute it with a hoe.
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| After cleaning it |
Not wanting it to die in vain, I cleaned it and prepared the skin for tanning. The hoe had damaged the skin but the remaining hide will demonstrate the appearance for future visitors. We tell the WOLF students about the "Hershey Kisses" you can see on their sides. We also explain that "if you look down and see the "hour glass" you know that it is a copperhead and you are way too close! We will see a lot more in the late summer when the cicadas emerge. These look like an M&M to a copperhead as we discussed in this blog.
We get to see lots of other snakes each year. Pygmy rattlesnakes are cute if you don't try to pet them. This one was curled up on a rock crossing in the middle of the road and earned a free ride several hundred feet away in the woods. We also have timber rattlesnakes like one that staked out the center of our driveway and defied me until I transplanted it a quarter mile away in the woods. You can see it warning me here.
One of my favorites are the northern watersnakes. We have had a lot of sightings this year including four gathered at one sitting on a downed sycamore. They congregate in our swimming hole, frequently sunning themselves on the bank. We have even found one on our deck 15 feet above the creek. Our biggest one was over 5 feet long and was killed by a visitor who thought it was a cottonmouth, a species none of us have found on Bull Creek. I saw the one below just starting to dine on a perch. By the time I got back with a camera it was almost down the hatch.
Finally, it is important to know your snakes as one of our guests learned a few years ago. After watching the watersnake swimming around with its head above water, he decided to catch it, not recognizing the whole body was on top of the water and it had little kisses on its side. You can see the whole episode recorded by his friends who encouraged him to "go ahead, pick it up!" Watch it here in this 2 minute video. It ended with $25,000 of antivenom and two days in the ICU. The final lessons we tell the WOLF students:
- Know your snakes
- Don't let buddies get you to do dumb things.
