I love garter snakes and if it was me, I'd just leave nature to do its thing.

Garter snakes are very opportunistic carnivores and will eat almost anything they're large enough to overpower and catch, including rodents, frogs, toads, lizards, fish, insects, and even earthworms, slugs and leeches. I've heard that some of the larger garter snakes will eat birds but haven't witnessed that myself.

In our yard, the garter snakes tend to stay in the area of the shady flower beds and the veggie garden and they stay away from our pond, which might be because the large bullfrogs in the lily pond will eat the garter snakes if they catch them. We do have a huge problem with water moccasins moving from the native creeks and ponds to our manmade lily pond as the native creeks and ponds dry up during drought. Then, the water moccasins eat the frogs and toads, although we shoot and kill any water moccasin in the lily pond because it is right between the back porch and the patio, and we'd rather not share our outdoor living space with a venomous snake. Last year we had a huge number of water moccasins considering the small size of the lily pond, but this year we only had two or three and we were able to get them before they wiped out the frog population. Still, there were fewer frogs and toads here than usual, but I blame that on the heat and drought.

I am not crazy about snakes, but try to live and let live as far as they are concerned, except we don't tolerate venomous snakes in the civilized yard area (they can roam at will on the rest of the acreage) and we don't tolerate rat snakes and chicken snakes in the chicken coops.

I don't think relocating snakes works because when they are hungry they just come back to the places where they found food in the past, so I'd leave them alone.

Tim tried for years to relocate chicken snakes and rat snakes instead of killing them, but they just came back (sometimes in the same day) and ate more eggs and killed more young chickens and guineas, so now we kill them whenever we find them in the fenced chicken run or chicken coops.

Oh, and I meant to add that I think garter snakes even eat other, smaller snakes, including their own young. I like the racer snakes we have here for that very reason....they eat young,small rattlesnakes and probably other snakes as well. Anything that helps control the rattlesnake population is very welcome here.

It would probably be best just to leave them alone. However, I can certainly understand if you don't want them on your property. I personally wouldn't mind them if I didn't have young children or pets. I try to leave things alone unless push comes to shove. Here is a resource for a natural way to keep them away from your house:

Hmmm....cinnamon and clove oil. I seriously considered getting rid of my wisteria that covers the fence outside our gate a couple of years ago, too. After coming home late one evening from school, I got out of the car to open the gate and put our dog in the house when I felt something slimy (I was wearing flip flops.) Thinking one of my cats might have left me a "tribute," I jumped back and looked for what it was in the headlights, only to see a copperhead slither under the gate into the yard. I, of course did my special version of the snake dance (which was spectacularly un-sexy, btw), hollering at my son to get his dad and put the dog up, while I tried to watch where the snake went. There was no hoe in sight, so Daryl proceeded to beat the thing to death and broke the handle off a grass rake in the process. Did I mention I don't really like snakes?

Nothing will repel a hungry snake no matter what kind of marketing stuff gets posted to our forum.

Sandplum, Our son stepped out of his car one evening in summer, after dark but in the lighted area near the security light, and found his foot on top of a copperhead which did not, miraculously, bite him. He hollered "Copperhead!" at us and stepped back into the car, since only that one leg was all the way out of the vehicle. We were sitting in lawn chairs chatting with some friends. That snake, had it chosen to turn and go back into the neighbor's pasture from whence it came, could have and would have lived. Instead, it chose to head straight for the lawn furniture we were sitting upon. Maybe it wanted to seek refuge under the furniture. Big mistake. Tim shot it. I felt kinda bad about that since the snake hadn't even bitten Chris when it certainly had the opportunity, but there's no way we're going to sit there chatting in the yard while a venomous snake prowls around our feet. I hate snakes as much as you do.

Dorothy, I wonder where the garter snakes went? We've never had a year that was free of garter snakes and I've already had one in the garden this year. Tim picked it up and carried it far from the garden and released it. I don't mind the garter snakes or rough green tree snakes, but venomous snakes automatically get killed if they venture into our people/animal space and I'm not going to apologize for that. We used to even catch and release rat snakes and chicken snakes, but they just keep coming back to the poultry coops over and over again, feasting on eggs and chicks, so they get the death penalty too if they are in or near the chicken coops.

The only good venomous snake is a dead one. We live in too much of a wilderness area to ever be snake-free, and they serve the important function of controlling rodents, but I'm still not going to share yard and garden space with the venomous ones.

Our little puppy dog, Princess, who is about six months old now, got bitten by something, probably a snake, in the dog yard last week. It likely hit her inside her mouth so I imagine she bent down low to the ground and tried to pick it up. Her mouth and snout started swelling up something awful immediately and she was in pain and whimpering, so off to the vet we went for a steroid shot. Since even the vet couldn't find fang marks, we'll never know for sure if it it was a snake or some sort of insect, but knowing our snake history, I suspect it was a snake. Our cat, Casper, had seen a snake a short distance from the dog yard several weeks ago (long before I would have thought snakes were active) and he tried to get it, then jumped back away from it, so I suspect it struck at him but missed him. With Princess, the swelling began going down as soon as she got the shot (and some Benadryl) and we continued to give her Benadryl for 48 hours thereafter to keep the swelling down. She's fine now and I hope she learned her lesson about messing with snakes.

I would expect the snakes are really getting out and moving more now that we are having sunshine and warmer temperatures, but I haven't seen a lot of them yet. Keep in mind that to my way of thinking, even one snake is one too many.

I've run over copperheads with the lawn mower that I never even saw before I hit them. I'm just glad I hit them with the mower instead of stepping on them. I know people who have been bitten by venomous snakes, including our next-door neighbor, and it was a horrible ordeal for them. The recovery is not easy and complications can last for months afterwards.

We had tons of copperheads in our early years, but in more recent years we see them a lot less. Unfortunately, the situation is reversed with the timber rattlers. We didn't see too many of them in our earliest years here, but for about the last 10 years, we see higher numbers of timber rattlers every year. Last year was the worst ever and it is a miracle I wasn't bitten by one because I had way too many close calls where I came within inches to 2' to 3' of timber rattlers before seeing them. For a while I was seeing them almost daily. The one that was within a few inches of my foot was very small. Had it been larger, I might have been in trouble.

Don't have a clue where the Garter snakes went. There were three of different sizes in the garden one summer and none the next. It's a mystery. IF only the large one had disappered I would have thought it died.

We don't tolerate venomous snakes close to the house either. And a few years ago we killed a couple black rat snakes every summer, but haven't seen one for about 3 years. The last one I killed had just wiped out a nestful of baby bluebirds, and I was very unhappy about that as we don't often have them nest so close.

Possums eat snakes. Maybe y'all had some possums hanging around.

I would have been unhappy about the bluebirds too. I know snakes have to eat, but they'd better not be eating cute little birdies in our front yard either, or it will be curtains for them.

I had one come up in our bathroom sink through the drain! DH moved a strawbale yesterday and there were 3 in there. I hate snakes. I wonder if they were in the bales when we bought them.

I think you need to have a plumber look at your drain pipes. There shouldn't be any space big enough for a snake to get into it.

There's a vent next to the house DH mowed over. Small hole which is probably filling the line with dirt or some other horrible thing will happen.

That would do it. Sounds like a new vent cap is called for.