Snakey visitor

I heard alot of birds making scolding noise and went out to see what the fuss was. There's a large Gardenia bush up against our back screen porch and it was full of Chickadees, Titmice, and a few Cardinals - must've been at least a dozen birds -all making a racket. Took me a while but I spotted the reason for the kerfuffle, about 2 feet off the ground.

Eeeeek! I do NOT like climbing snakes! Nearly impossible to get a shot through the screen - as you can see - but this was good enough for an ID , I think. A juvenile Rat Snake, I believe. It was only about 16" or so long. :}

Can anyone confirm that ID? And why isn't this little fella already safely tucked in underground after the frosty temps we had this week?
Deb

It looks like a baby rat snake.

http://www.snakesandfrogs.com/scra/snakes/images/blackratjuv22.jpg

I wouldn't worry about him. Think it's a rat snake and you're better off having those around then not.

oops forgot to put this in. http://i.livescience.com/images/ig39_Rat_snake_09.jpg

Eek! I am not a snake person. I worry about them with the dogs and cats.

Thanks for the confirmations, guys. I also am concerned about the pets. My dogs were trying to get to it through the screen. I know these guys only bite when threatened, but if the dogs had gotten to him, he would have felt threatened! LOL. He's gone on his way now, thank goodness. Still gives me the creeps, though.

Snakes are our friends. They eat rats and mice. Lol .. I don't really mind them unless they are black snakes with an attitude who don't like to share the backyard. I've been chased many a time by a blacksnake that lived in a broken brick post at my house in Virginia .. if it woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day I knew he'd come after me. After getting hit with a broom a few hundred times, he sorta got the message .. his chases became only half hearted and my English kitty Poppy (who was born and spent his first few months in "a bad neighborhood", thus was a scrapper, that never backed down) used to beat the crap out of him even though the snake was 4 feet long.

I see copperheads, water moccasins, rat, black and garter snakes a lot where I live .. we share our space and co-exist peacefully for the most part.

X

That little guy will get killed off by cats so I wouldn't worry about them. Most likely the dogs would finish him off too. My one dog has no problem running off a big snake, sniffs them right out.

Oh yea, I know about rat snakes giving you the creeps. I repeat to myself, "They're harmless, they do good things."

I have a couple living in my pump house. I try to pretend that they're just little snakes, but they won't let me.

Xeramtheum- I had to laugh when I read how your snake only chased you half-heartedly. After being beat with a broom a couple hundred times - he probably didn't know which 'end was up' and had no choice but to proceed slowly!

Though probably not possible, as snake brains aren't very big, I'm wondering if it became a game to him .. I never hit him with stick end of the broom as I didn't want to hurt him, just make it uncomfortable to chase me out of my own yard (Poppy would always leave punctures) and he'd stay in his hole if Poppy was anywhere near. It really took a couple of hundred times. 3 months before he finally slowed down and quit lunging at me. Black snakes are really mean critters with bad attitudes.

X

X, you're braver than I am (and so is Poppy!). I leave snakes alone - waaaay alone. I go the opposite direction from where the snake is. Only reason I could even get close that little Rat snake is because he was so tiny and there was a screen between us. :)

I'm like B&J, "It won't hurt me, it won't hurt me." LOL. But if I walked into the pump house and saw the scene in your photo,..I'd have pulled several muscles hurrying out the door!

Deb

Actually, brooms work very well on snakes .. aside from the fact you don't have to get close to them .. you can wallop the beejeebers out of them with the flat part and poke them too .. even "sweep" them in another direction. I always have a broom nearby when I'm working at the end of my garden .. in my experience you only have to wallop a copperhead once to send them packing .. moccasins on the other hand are a little denser .. it takes 3 - 4 flat wallops and some well placed pokes in the eyes to turn them around .. and since the broom is essentially "invisible" to them thermally they rarely strike or lunge.

Garter snakes and rat snakes generally leave willingly without any encouragement, especially if you go toward them.

X

Yeah, Deb, had a similar experience this year with a young rat snake we frequently found wrapped around our Bunting feeder this year. I like the things (do more good than harm), but Amy's Buntings are more important, so it had to be dealt with. Tried to "trap it", but it was smarter than me---managed to miss the capture bag every time. The Bunting feeder is off our back deck, 20' off the ground. How the thing climbed up there completely escapes me, but it did. Repeatedly. On the last attempt to make it go away--- as it missed my humanitarian attempt to get it in the "capture bag"---I swatted it with a light plastic oar on it's way down. Haven't seen him since.
I routinely kill poisonous snakes on the property, with no remorse and no mercy. But I protect Black, King, Rat, and other "good guys"... Think about it--- They're on your side!

Yup, I know. I don't hurt them - I just give them a wide birth. :)
We haven't had any Bunting visitors in quite a while. I keep their favorite seeds out at migration time, just in case though.

I feel like a spokesperson for WIld Birds Unlimited but ever since we started using their advanced pole system for our feeders we haven't had a snake or a squirrel anywhere near them - other than on the ground. Their baffle appears to be identical to all the others out there but this one works for us.

My dog, the biggest wuss, is scared to death of snakes. He jumps 3' in the air if anything moves on the ground around him. He had a young black snake playing with him (tormenting him) a few weeks ago and he is still wary in that part of the yard. I'll have to teach him how to use a broom.

We still have the occasional "green bird" bunting but the adults all seem to have left for the season and the gold finches are arriving in droves.

we bought one of those Yankee birdfeeders from WBU. talk about no squirrels. I wished they'd try again, they don't anymore. watching them "take a swing around" was a HOOT, they looked so drunk.

I was worried because our feeder is on a high deck that they would be hurt. well, they haven't been yet. it does the same thing to pigeons that try to pilfer, and the larger, fat mourning doves.