Great shot with the forked tongue showing.

Very cool! Is that a black rat snake?

Cool!

Stoney

Awesome!

Josh

Beautiful snake. They are good at killing rats and mice and are very beneficial. Thank you for not killing it as some would have.

NIce rat snake. We have tons of'em around here. They live in the trees when it's hot, and you can see the skins hanging down from the oaks. Really bad tempered though. They WILL bite you if you don't grab'em behind the head. Many little small teefus.
They don't play dead like the spreading adder (hognose snake) does...

Only snakes I kill are the more aggressive poison ones, like Copperheads and Water Mocs, well, I take that back, several years ago we had a really big water snake move into our ornamental pond, which would be fine, but he was using our pond as a smorgasbord and eating all my goldfish... sorry, that's not acceptable. And we did try to get rid of him by removing the pond. I don't even kill rattlers.

That's interesting that you say that Tom, this guy was not bad tempered at all, he was very mellow. Well, for me he was terrified and trying his best to get away from me, I didn't want to hurt him, just look at him. For my husband, he was very mellow. Mike grabbed him to take him to a safer location and he didn't seem to mind at all, Mike was laughing saying he thinks he's a pet. Oh well, hopefully he will stay outside the inner fence. I don't think our Kuvs or BC's will bother him, but our rescue Pyr is a hunter and a killer.
Pam

Lots of Black Rat Snakes around here . I get them in my garden all the time. They are usually very mellow and do make a good pet.

Nice little rodent hunter.

I've seen one tame up fast, it attempted a few savage bites when caught, then allowed a bunch of us to handle him afterwards. Obviously not poisonous but the needle-teeth can launch some nasty bacteria under the skin and into the bloodstream. Handle with care.

Steve

sjetski,
Exactly. They calm down after awhile. The worst injury you can get from one of those is when they bite, latch on, and you try to rip yer hand away, leaving long cuts.
Kind of unnerving to be walking through the woods of an evening, and have one drop his head down out of a tree and look at you...eye level.
I'm so glad they're no Black Mambas around here...

Holy cow Tom, that's exactly how we caught the rat snake i mentioned earlier.

Walking down a tight woodland trail, my sister pauses for a moment, then notices one forking it's toungue at her, just inches away from her face.

I've never heard a more piercing shriek than the one that followed. Her hubby was the one who "rescued her" and caught it. .. lol

Steve

sjetski,
LOL.
As a surveyor, I've had to work around snakes all my life. We got a job topoing an abandoned trailer park on the banks of the Colorado river, about 10 acres. It had been abandoned for 15-20 years and was all grown up with trees and brush up to about 10-12'. Full of fire ants too. As we started the topo, we noticed that the trees were full of 12" long copperheads that'd drop on you when started to cut line. The fire ants had run the snakes up the trees. Every old septic tank was full of rattlers and copperheads too. We left and got snake leggings and cheap cowboy hats with flat brims, and kept our collars buttoned. We even had copperheads in the survey truck. Luckily no bites...

YOw... yeah, spending 8 wks in Colorado for field camp, I came across more rattlers than I could count. But never an aggressive one. Colorado is a snaky area. A friend of mine lost her Kuvasz a couple of years ago, she got home and her girl had several bite marks, vet couldn't save her... so sad. But I really hate copperheads, they are nasty snakes. I like snakes, always have, but I usually avoid the poisonous one. I definitely prefer snakes to mice, I just don't like it when they eat my frogs.
Pam

I LOVES frog laigs...

Not my froggies you don't! Two things I have never tried, frog legs and Mt. oysters.
Pam

Beautiful snake Pam!

When I was about 4 my mother and I came across one similar walking to the bay in Delaware. I remember it being bigger than an Anaconda. My mother picked me up, froze and screamed until my Poppop came and saved us. Wonder why I still like them.

Wow Pam,

I didn't realize one of my ex-GF's was living in your neck of the woods.

Next time you see her tell her Bill says hello!

LOL

Pam,
Colorado River as in Tejas.
Snakiest area I've ever been in was the Aransas Pass National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf Coast. Used to have a bow-hunt there every year for deer and hogs. Place is full of 14' 'gators and 6' water moccasins, and Volkswagen sized hogs. Place has fields of Tepin peppers too.
BTW, last year a couple of fishermen killed a 14' gator in a slough a couple of miles from here. Right downstream from Austin. Had to pull it out with a wrecker...

Hahaha, I didn't even think river, guess my brain stopped after Colorado. ;-) Snakiest place I've ever been is Colorado. I remember one day in field camp north of Del Norte we were walking down a hillside that was covered in holes, as we walked down the rattles followed us, it was such an eerie feeling.

hahahaha, BILL!! you are so bad!

thanks alynne. One of my coworkers was telling me that it looked like the snake she called animal control to come remove from her garage, except the one in her garage (and she is using her hands here to show me it's circumference) was about 6" in diameter. I told her she had to have had a python then cos we don't have any that big around here. She told me she might be exaggerating, but it sure seemed to look that big. ;-)
Pam