A week ago, a friend found a baby copperhead in a pile of leaf rubbish next to her house. This was in a neighborhood in Tulsa. So, be very careful!!

Last week I discovered my pet California King Snake was missing. Last night the cats were messing with him in the laundry room when I was at the store. DH locked the cats out but Garak wasn't coming out for anything. Tonight the younger cat, Bones, was sitting and staring intently at the crack between the fridge and the cabinet. Lo and behold, there was Garak! He's back home now with fresh water and a yummy mouse.

He's not poisonous but it was a bit nerve-wracking to walk around the house at night...

Yes I once brushed my foot over what I thought was a belt in the house. I was barefooted and thought that didn't feel like a belt. It was a black snake.

I know the felling. Last summer I had 1 jump at me from behind the water faucet while doing dishes.
Another in a box in our spare bed room. I yelled theres a snake! He's like whatever, then the snake bit the top of
his foot.
I also have a giant red tailed boa who keeps getting out.
I have a 2 lb dog. I wouldn't the house for 2 weeks till we found her.

The really 'icky' (from my point of view) thing about the snake that bit the firefighter was that it held onto him, or held onto his clothing, and wouldn't let go.

When our next door neighbor was bitten a few years ago, the copperhead sort of wrapped itself around her ankle and wouldn't let go even though she was shaking her leg and trying to get it off of her.

The day I came up here to our land while the electric line and water line were being put in so our house could be built, two people in our neighborhood were bitten....one by a copperhead and one by a rattlesnake. The electric co-op guys were telling me about it. With one of those two people, the snake wouldn't let go of the person, so someone cut the snake's body off its' head, and the medics transported that person with the snake's head still attached to the person. Just thinking of that makes my skin crawl.

Other firefighters encountered pretty large copperheads (large for copperheads, which generally aren't really big) yesterday, but they got the snake before it got them.

i remember childhood carying a snake kit around.;
My mom was bit by one,

Helen's story reminded me of the time I went to the mailbox wearing sandals and stepped on something rubbery. It was a blacksnake! My feet didn't touch the ground all the way back inside.

I just read on a blog that two people in Arkansas had been bitten by copperheads while shopping in Wal-Mart garden centers! That is something to be aware of.....I always dig in the middle of things trying to find a 'better' plant and never think about snakes.........I will now!

My best advice is never garden in shorts or sandals and definitely not barefoot...yet people still do.
I also always wear gloves when gardening and pulling weeds.

my mom and i were hanging out laundry, when i was about 16, and we saw a snake at our feet. since all the "men" had left, it was just mom and us 4 girls....the laundry hung out there until we could get one of my uncles to come over and get it down.

when i was in CA, we had western rattlers all the time at the ranch. we only had to deal with them when they got in the barns or turnouts and came too close to the horses. we lost 3 pregnant mares, and 2 geldings in one weekend to snake bites in the face. it was horrible, and still makes me cry if i think about it too much.

i have a deal with the snakes here...they can be here, i just don't want to know about them. and then last week, i saw a skin in the middle of the back yard. i'm like, dude! seriously?!

ugh. creepy beyond words....

Every so often I find a skin in the garage. It's probably a garter snake or one of those black ones. Rat snake? I'd rather have the snake than the mice!

Tigerdawn, even if it was JUST a garter snake, you should be worried. They are extremely deadly.

Garden Grass Snakes also known as Garter Snakes (Thamnophissirtalis) can be dangerous. Yes, grass snakes, NOT rattlesnakes. Here's why.

A couple in Sweetwater , Texas had a lot of potted plants. During a recent cold spell, the wife was bringing a lot of them indoors to protect them from a possible freeze.
It turned out that a little green garden grass snake was hidden in one of the plants. When it had warmed up, it slithered out and the wife saw it go under the sofa.
She let out a very loud scream.
The husband (who was taking a shower) ran out into the living room naked to see what the problem was. She told him there was a snake under the sofa.
He got down on the floor on his hands and knees to look for it. About that time the family dog came and cold-nosed him on the behind.

He thought the snake had bitten him, so he screamed and fell over on the floor.
His wife thought he had had a heart attack, so she covered him up, told him to lie still and called an ambulance.
The attendants rushed in, would not listen to his protests, loaded him on the stretcher, and started carrying him out.
About that time, the snake came out from under the sofa and the Emergency Medical Technician saw it and dropped his end of the stretcher. That's when the man broke his leg and why he is still in the hospital.
The wife still had the problem of the snake in the house, so she called on a neighbor who volunteered to capture the snake. He armed himself with a rolled-up newspaper and began poking under the couch. Soon he decided it was gone and told the woman, who sat down on the sofa in relief. But while relaxing, her hand dangled in between the cushions, where she felt the snake wriggling around. She screamed and fainted, the snake rushed back under the sofa.
The neighbor man, seeing her lying there passed out, tried to use CPR to revive her.
The neighbor's wife, who had just returned from shopping at the grocery store, saw her husband's mouth on the woman's mouth and slammed her husband in the back of the head with a bag of canned goods, knocking him out
and cutting his scalp to a point where it needed stitches.
The noise woke the woman from her dead faint and she saw her neighbor lying on the floor with his wife bending over him, so she assumed that the snake had bitten him. She went to the kitchen and got a small bottle of whiskey, and
began pouring it down the man's throat. By now, the police had arrived.
Breathe here......
They saw the unconscious man, smelled the whiskey, and assumed that a drunken fight had occurred. They were about to arrest them all, when the women tried to explain how it all happened over a little green snake The police called an ambulance, which took away the neighbor and his sobbing wife.
Now, the little snake again crawled out from under the sofa and one of the policemen drew his gun and fired at it. He missed the snake and hit the leg of the end table. The table fell over, the lamp on it shattered and, as the bulb broke,
it started a fire in the drapes.
The other policeman tried to beat out the flames, and fell through the window into the yard on top of the family dog that, startled, jumped out and raced into the street, where an oncoming car swerved to avoid it and smashed into the parked police car.
Meanwhile, neighbors saw the burning drapes and called in the fire department. The firemen had started raising the fire ladder when they were halfway down the street. The rising ladder tore out the overhead wires, put out the neighborhood power, and disconnected the telephones in a ten-square city block area (....but they did get the house fire out).
Time passed! Men were discharged from the hospital, the house was repaired, the dog came home, the police acquired a new car and all was right with their world.
A while later they were watching TV and again, the weatherman announced a cold snap for that night.
The wife asked her husband if he thought they should bring in their plants for the night.

And that's when he shot her.

Jo,

LOL

That snake story is as old as I am.

Dawn

*snicker* i've haven't heard that one before :)

Good story!! Had me chuckling outloud. Reminds me of the times I've taken down hanging pots and found snake skins in them.

All,
Your "BE CAREFUL" stories remind me of last week here. I had to make a quick trip to Walmart and my wife told me to be careful. I said OK, and when I returned she was mowing the yard with a pushmower in flip-flops! Lord, Lord.
Best to you all
Bill

That was awesome!

I still think I'll take my chances with the snake in the garage. They might accidentally kill me but they carry less nastiness than mice and are less destructive.