"And this is why we don't kill black snakes" Topic

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Wow.

Cool pic!

Yep. Costa Rica has some trouble with fer-de-lance snakes because the farmers kill all the snakes they can find. Usually what they can find are the indigos, which eat the fer-de-lance.

Came across one while trimming pine trees for a xmas tree farm once. One mean and aggressive animal. Damn near bit me in the face as it was in a tree at the time. I whacked it with the shears out of instinct and promtly quit.

I never heard of black snakes, but grew up with rattlesnakes at my grandparents. Beasts they are. As a young adult, I went fishing with my Dad at a remote lake in the desert. It was hot that day and we were down to just shorts. We caught our fill and Dad was going to give our bass to some campers down the way. My feet were dangling in the water. As soon as he left, a rattlesnake slithered between my foot and the water. It slightly glazed my foot as he slithered by. If I moved, I feared he would strike and we were at least a 3 hour drive to a hospital. I was stiff as a board, but needless to say, that was the longest couple minutes in my life. I told Dad I didn't like that spot and that we had to go. Had a lot of run ins with rattlesnakes but that was the closest.

Where are black snakes?

I know we have black snakes here in the southeast. I had a good scare from a black snake one time. I was returning homeone evening when I had left the porch light off. As I reached out for the door know I saw the silhouette of the head of a snake pointing toward the door from a mailbox beside the door. After cautiosly backing to my car, I got a flashlight and saw that it was just a black snake so waited for it to make its way off the porch as I didn't want to scare it away. At the time we lived by a creek so we were constantly fighting rats and copperheads, so I was actually glad to see the black snake.

I think I saw that same set of photos and they called that snake a Bull Snake – they are dark brown to black in color.

Nice pictures though.

All snakes are a good(even the posonous ones, they keep the pests to a minimum levl.

We only have one posonous here, and it's not realy that dangourus, adults realy die from them, old people and children might, but it's more a problem for dogs.

But it's no were nare as bad as any rattle snake

Now now the Rattle Snake is a gentleman compared to the Water Moccasin or Cottonmouth.

Given a chance the RS will alert you that it's there in an effort to keep you away. I have heard them often in the woods and never had one strike or come after me. The WM, however, will come at you even if you are in a boat minding your own business. It is a very aggresive snake.

D~

I once nearly ran over a King Cobra while on a bicycle track in Malaysia. There was a stick across the path up ahead. I was within about 25 ft when I realised it was no stick. That was plenty close enough.

Fortunately for me, it decided it didn't like the situation any more than me and slithered off even before I could turn my bike around and get the heck outa there, which is just as well because if it wanted to close the distance it could have.

A friend of mine DID run over a Boa in the same wetland park. It was under the water as he went over a flooded bit of the track.

Another reason I like the NE US. Our bugs are irritating, but not dangerous, Timber Rattlers are very rare, for the most part the snakes eat mice and rats.
The entomologists had a huge Tarantula in a jar when I was in Haiti though.

Nice!

CC

You may have seen images of an indigo eating a bull snake. The bull snakes (at least down here) have markings and coloration very similar to the rattlers, with a cool mimicry behavior. They vibrate their tails in leaves to imitate the sound of a rattler's rattle.

Indigoes can range in color from bluish-black to deep brown. In general they are docile snakes, but they can get decently big -- over 2 meters long. And yeah, they climb trees. They are sometimes called brown snakes, and sometimes called gopher snakes because they live in tortoise burrows.

They used to have a pretty decent range, but since habitat destruction and human activity have really affected them, it's a bit more spotty. South-east US states and down into deep south Texas pretty well covers what's left.

There is a similar-looking snake called the black racer that is also lovely to look at, and fast as greased lightning. It gets pretty far north (I don't have my herp book handy, and can't recall if it gets all the way into Canada or not, but it does make it into the Dakotas & New England).

When I lived in the South, a friend of mine had some workers out to the house.

When they went to leave, they found a black snake had wrapped itself around the rear axel.

They were wringing their hands, trying to figure what to do.

He told them it was only a black snake and he'd take care of it.

So he reached up behind the snake's head and grabbed on.
Unfortunately for him, he grabbed too far back and it turned its head around and clamped on to his hand.

"Watch this." :-)

JW

Jovian1

Bull snakes do have a similar look, but the rattles are pretty clearly shown down near the end of the series.

DRDHauser: Don't know what kind of snake it was, but wh en working at a golf course, I went around back to relieve myself.

As I did so, the grass started moving. When I separated the moving from unmoving *grass*, I found myself directly over a snake.

Don't know what kind, whitish, with purple rectangles, but it must have thought it was raining, because, luckily, it just moved on.

Used to fish at a Wildlife pond. The agent, one day, had been out killing snakes and had a row of about ten moccasins lined up.

"Red and yellow will kill a fellow."

JW

Cool pic!

Living in the piedmont section of NC and near a creek, we had to deal with snakes all the time.

My mother is deathly afraid of snakes and of course, one blistering hot summer night when I was about 13 and my father was away, a black snake got into the house – my mother freaked and it was my job to get the snake. Me, being stupid, killed it, mainly because I was too afraid to pick the darned thing up.

Needless to say that when my father returned, he had some choice words for his only son and the next day we went snake hunting, found a black snake and Dad forced me to pick it up. Since then, I've never hurt another black snake [living in Poland – there aren't any]. Agree with the other posters though, damn water moccasins and cottonmouths are nasty mothers. Once saw a water moccasin attack my brother-in-law's pontoon boat!

Erk! Thank goodness in my country (New Zealand) there are no snakes at all, either good or bad. You guys can keep 'em!

Yeah but you got Kiwis, they are much worse, snikeing in to peoples homes sticking their beak into your ear and sucking out your brain.

Also you have Peter Jackson