Congratulations! I haven't seen a rat snake in a while, but something is getting the rats as I see a lot fewer signs of them in the store room than there used to be. I don't wish any rats on you, but hope he finds something to eat.

Maybe if it hears the noise of a loud approaching lawn mower it will leave. Then you'll have reptile poop too. I put up bird netting around a tomato plant 2 years ago and a rat snake got its mouth caught. Then its scales got caught too and it died in less than a day. I felt bad because I know rat snakes are 'good', certainly better than rodents. I sprayed mine with a hose, until I realized it was dead.

I finished mowing and didn't see him again. I inspected the yard and let the dogs out, so far, so good.

Roselee, every once in a while the dogs or cats will find a mouse, my guess is that they shelter in the garden sheds in our neighborhood. I haven't seen a rat in a couple of years but we sometimes have one that walks the highest horizontal support of the neighbor's privacy fence. Drives the dogs bonkers!

We found a long rat snake in our yard last year. He’d slither up in the trees. We only saw him a couple of times, and never again! I hope nothing happened to him. I wanted him to be a mouser for me.

We had a huge field a couple blocks over from me, that was recently plowed and turned into a neighborhood. The people in the houses closest to the field are already having problems with rats, and I hope they don’t make their way into my yard too!

Hey guys: Whenever I see ANY type of. Snake, I nearly have a heart attack!!! I blame my inordinate fear of snakes having participated in the rattle snake beauty contest ( we are talking South Alabama in the 60's) at the annual rattlesnake rodeo. They had this huge cage like contraption with at least 500 rattlers in it....I kid you not. I entered the contest on a dare... high school stupidity. I still have nightmares of being thrown into the container with the snakes! So if I see a snake, I run, screaming like a little girl!

Margeetx, I respect snakes but also have a bit of fear when I know one is out there. My head was on swivel mode while I was mowing :-)

I found the shedded skin of a rat snake in my garden. It was quite large and underneath a bunch of sunflowers I was pulling. Gave me a little jolt when I first saw it. Wonder if it was from the same one I spotted last year.

It hadn't occurred to me that snakes could get tangled in bird netting. Last summer I went out to check on the cherry tomatoes turning ripe under bird netting. I was so focused on the fruits that I failed to notice the rat snake that had picked out the ideal lurking spot on the trellis under the netting. We did not become aware of each other until my forearm brushed against it. Needless to say, we both took off in opposite directions.

You know what they say, where you see one snake there are two!.

Glad they weren't poisonous. I think that's all I've ever some across, the bad ones!