All About Pocket Knives

Mel, I do wish I had your fondness for snakes. I can recognize their beauty but that is not enough for me to overcome my dislike.

About a week ago, for the first time, I found a shed snake skin on the front porch. I suspect this belonged to my recent visitor.

Of the states you mentioned, I favor Idaho.

If you like snakes, you are welcome to one of these.

Or take one of these boys out for coffee some time mate...

You guys are CRAZY if your the ones taking those pictures! I'm such a coward when it comes to snakes I would pee my pants to walk up on any of those.

WillyCamaro wrote: ↑Sat Jun 12, 2021 11:12 pm Or take one of these boys out for coffee some time mate...

No No No.!!!

Montana is my favorite.

Heeeeey David,
My buddy here wants to come over and shake hands.

Mum say's i can't come out and play, i have to clean my room.

WillyCamaro wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:54 pm Heeeeey David,
My buddy here wants to come over and shake hands.

Excuse me while I go see what's happening IN THE NEXT STATE!

...

While I’m not a great lover of snakes, I do appreciate a good black snake, cow sucker, or chicken snake, whatever you want to call them. The old men around here when I was a kid all had a black snake or two in the corn crib to control mice and rats. And woe be until you if you ever hurt their snake.

We have a black snake who lives in our barn (the boys named him Slimy George), and our mouse population down there have gone down considerable since his arrival. We found his old skin in the hay loft this spring. He’s about 6’ long now.
My oldest boy saw this one crawling under the shop porch a few days ago. I’m glad he showed up. I get mice in there every winter. I hope he hangs around.

Colonel26 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 15, 2021 9:01 pm While I’m not a great lover of snakes, I do appreciate a good black snake, cow sucker, or chicken snake, whatever you want to call them. The old men around here when I was a kid all had a black snake or two in the corn crib to control mice and rats. And woe be until you if you ever hurt their snake.

We have a black snake who lives in our barn (the boys named him Slimy George), and our mouse population down there have gone down considerable since his arrival. We found his old skin in the hay loft this spring. He’s about 6’ long now.

5F183790-D6CD-4E22-98B5-90BD4DB9B54E.jpeg

My oldest boy saw this one crawling under the shop porch a few days ago. I’m glad he showed up. I get mice in there every winter. I hope he hangs around.

894A06D4-853C-4C47-A958-CB8C25BD7065.jpeg

Now that's a skin.

Colonel26 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 15, 2021 9:01 pm While I’m not a great lover of snakes, I do appreciate a good black snake, cow sucker, or chicken snake, whatever you want to call them.

Colonel - When you say cow sucker, are you talking about a Milk Snake? I have never seen one of those, though I think I am in their range. I have to love the old tales that credit Milk Snakes with sucking the milk out of cows, though if you ever tried milking a cow it is a bit hard to figure just how the snakes did it. Same with the Goatsucker birds. Back in the old days, things like a cow or goat drying up did not just happen - there had to be a reason!

Talking about beneficial rodent eating snakes, here is a very fine Corn Snake that I photographed crossing a road. The first time I ever saw one of those was in our corn crib when I was a kid. Beautiful creatures.

Dinadan wrote: ↑Tue Jun 15, 2021 11:21 pm

Colonel26 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 15, 2021 9:01 pm While I’m not a great lover of snakes, I do appreciate a good black snake, cow sucker, or chicken snake, whatever you want to call them.

Colonel - When you say cow sucker, are you talking about a Milk Snake? I have never seen one of those, though I think I am in their range. I have to love the old tales that credit Milk Snakes with sucking the milk out of cows, though if you ever tried milking a cow it is a bit hard to figure just how the snakes did it. Same with the Goatsucker birds. Back in the old days, things like a cow or goat drying up did not just happen - there had to be a reason!

Talking about beneficial rodent eating snakes, here is a very fine Corn Snake that I photographed crossing a road. The first time I ever saw one of those was in our corn crib when I was a kid. Beautiful creatures.

Beautiful creature indeed mate.

Dinadan wrote: ↑Tue Jun 15, 2021 11:21 pm

Colonel26 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 15, 2021 9:01 pm While I’m not a great lover of snakes, I do appreciate a good black snake, cow sucker, or chicken snake, whatever you want to call them.

Colonel - When you say cow sucker, are you talking about a Milk Snake? I have never seen one of those, though I think I am in their range. I have to love the old tales that credit Milk Snakes with sucking the milk out of cows, though if you ever tried milking a cow it is a bit hard to figure just how the snakes did it. Same with the Goatsucker birds. Back in the old days, things like a cow or goat drying up did not just happen - there had to be a reason!

Talking about beneficial rodent eating snakes, here is a very fine Corn Snake that I photographed crossing a road. The first time I ever saw one of those was in our corn crib when I was a kid. Beautiful creatures.

I’m not sure what a milk snake is, I’ll have to look that up. Those are all names for the nonvenomous snake in this area. They go by many names depending on the community you find them in: cow snake, cow sucker, chicken snake, pilot snake, mountain black snake, gray rat snake, Allegheny black snake, scaly black snake, rusty black snake, tree black snake and pilot black snake.

Here are a couple of pictures I found from the internet of what we call chicken snakes and black snakes. The bottom one is what’s living in my barn.

Colonel26 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 16, 2021 2:31 am Here are a couple of pictures I found from the internet of what we call chicken snakes and black snakes. The bottom one is what’s living in my barn.

The fellow really should cut down on the rats and mice in the barn!

We also had chicken snakes when I was a kid. They did eat chicken eggs: I remember seeing the lumps in the snake when it was in a chicken nest. I think Grey Rat Snake is the correct term. Here is one that I spotted a while back. Notice the dew berries and blossoms where I found it. Did you ever see a snake when picking berries?

Dinadan wrote: ↑Wed Jun 16, 2021 3:29 pm

Colonel26 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 16, 2021 2:31 am Here are a couple of pictures I found from the internet of what we call chicken snakes and black snakes. The bottom one is what’s living in my barn.

The fellow really should cut down on the rats and mice in the barn!

We also had chicken snakes when I was a kid. They did eat chicken eggs: I remember seeing the lumps in the snake when it was in a chicken nest. I think Grey Rat Snake is the correct term. Here is one that I spotted a while back. Notice the dew berries and blossoms where I found it. Did you ever see a snake when picking berries?
Grey rat snake12.jpg

Yes, in fact it’s not uncommon although I don’t see them a lot. One theory I’ve heard is that the snakes are waiting for birds that come to eat the berries. I try to keep a close watch, and use a stick about 3 or 4 feet long to reach in and lift the berry vines before reaching with my hand to pick them. We have a lot of copperheads but I’ve never seen one in the berry patch. Usually what I see are harmless Texas rat snakes which are also common here. They’ll give you a start when you see one though, until you recognize what they are.

Ken

Dinadan wrote: ↑Wed Jun 16, 2021 3:29 pm

Colonel26 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 16, 2021 2:31 am Here are a couple of pictures I found from the internet of what we call chicken snakes and black snakes. The bottom one is what’s living in my barn.

The fellow really should cut down on the rats and mice in the barn!

We also had chicken snakes when I was a kid. They did eat chicken eggs: I remember seeing the lumps in the snake when it was in a chicken nest. I think Grey Rat Snake is the correct term. Here is one that I spotted a while back. Notice the dew berries and blossoms where I found it. Did you ever see a snake when picking berries?
Grey rat snake12.jpg

We don’t have a lot of dew berries left around here. Too much cattle and bushhogs. I have a patch here on me, but the goats keep them eat back. But it isn’t uncommon to see them out picking blackberries.

Mumbleypeg wrote: ↑Wed Jun 16, 2021 4:26 pm [quote=Dinadan post_id=930157 time=<a href="tel:1623857365">1623857365</a> user_id=15761]
[quote=Colonel26 post_id=930035 time=<a href="tel:1623810690">1623810690</a> user_id=14441]
Here are a couple of pictures I found from the internet of what we call chicken snakes and black snakes. The bottom one is what’s living in my barn.

The fellow really should cut down on the rats and mice in the barn!

We also had chicken snakes when I was a kid. They did eat chicken eggs: I remember seeing the lumps in the snake when it was in a chicken nest. I think Grey Rat Snake is the correct term. Here is one that I spotted a while back. Notice the dew berries and blossoms where I found it. Did you ever see a snake when picking berries?
Grey rat snake12.jpg
[/quote]

Yes, in fact it’s not uncommon although I don’t see them a lot. One theory I’ve heard is that the snakes are waiting for birds that come to eat the berries. I try to keep a close watch, and use a stick about 3 or 4 feet long to reach in and lift the berry vines before reaching with my hand to pick them. We have a lot of copperheads but I’ve never seen one in the berry patch. Usually what I see are harmless Texas rat snakes which are also common here. They’ll give you a start when you see one though, until you recognize what they are.

Ken
[/quote]

We have copperheads too and a couple of counties over from her there’s rattle snakes (but not in my area thankfully). While I’m not terrified of snakes, I’m not a great lover of them either. I do get a bit startled when I walk up one one unexpectedly.

I hate snakes.

I let them be unless they are a rattler or copperhead. These get immediate execution. If I ever run across a non-native snake, it will be killed as well. We don't need any pythons or boas or cobras or other non-North America snakes running looose.

Despite my hatred of snakes, I don't kill any other snake unless it has found a way into the house. Throwing those out just leads to repeated intrusions. Once they follow a mouse scent into a house, they will continue to sneak in.

My hatred of snakes stems back initially to when I was 6 years old and sent out to retrieve the night's deposit of eggs out in the hen house. I was just tall enough to reach up and into the top row of nests for the eggs.

I reached into one of the nests and came out with a chicken snake/rat snake longer than I was tall attached to my hand. Still have the scars on my right hand to prove it 60 years later.

Having also been struck in the boot 3x by rattlers, I never do pasture work unless wearing snake boots/leggings.

I've only killed 9 rattlers since January, but 2 of them were on the front door stoop, one on the back door stoop and one in the flower bed next to the back door. The rest were located in one of the out buildings or curled up sunning themselves in the backyard.

I must be winning the battle since I used to average a rattler a week. My cousin, who lives 1/4 mile away direct line across the pasture, usually catched 3 or more per month in his shop. We think he has a massive snake den under the concrete slab poured by his grandfather back right after WW2.

Sounds like what I used to have here on my place except it was copperheads (never seen a rattler here in over 45 years, but we do have a few cottonmouths). Until I got some guineas several years ago. They have definitely thinned out the snake population around the house and outbuildings. Still see copperheads and other snakes in the creek bottoms though.

Ken

Driving along a back road I discovered this unusual lawn decoration. I'll have to stop by sometime and ask the owner if he was in an aviation unit in Nam.

I just let the dogs out and stepped out onto the patio to wait for them when I saw the cats appeared to have something cornered. Usually they have a mouse or a frog. This time it was something else - a little copperhead about 12 inches long.

Ken

Watch out for its siblings. Brood size averages 4 to 7, but have been observed with as few a 1 and as many as 20. Older/larger females tend to have larger broods. They start out about 8 inches, so this one was an early spring hatchling.

zzyzzogeton wrote: ↑Thu Jul 01, 2021 2:03 pm Watch out for its siblings. Brood size averages 4 to 7, but have been observed with as few a 1 and as many as 20. Older/larger females tend to have larger broods. They start out about 8 inches, so this one was an early spring hatchling.

Thanks for the info. This one was under a big red oak, between its trunk and the flagstone patio. And right where our grandkids play - I’ve told our granddaughter over and again not to go outside barefoot at night but it falls on deaf ears (she normally wears boots during the day). This is the first snake of any kind I’ve seen in the yard in a few years, since we’ve had guinea fowl. I probably wouldn’t have seen this one had it not been that the cats had it surrounded. After I killed it they had a great time with it.

Ken

Copperheads are notorius for being found in trees, especially during cicada season. They will congregate at the base of and on the trunks of oak trees (maybe other species as well) waiting for the cicadas to emerge from the ground and start crawling up tree trunks.

Here a famous/infamous picture from the internet. There are 4 copperheads in this picture. Most folks only find 3. Some have only found 2.