Speaking of Snakes

I'm not fond of them, but I respect them. Here in Michigan there is the Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake. (Never saw one up close & personal) So when you're out on the farm doing your tractor work or whatever, do watch for snakes?
Share your favorite snake story.....

In my 20's I lived in a rent house on the edge of a small town. About an acre of land. There were wild blackberries on my front yard fencerow, so I would pick barefooted. Normally thats not a good idea because of stray canes and their thorns, but since it was the edge of the yard I didn't wear shoes. Felt something move under my foot so I pulled back. It was the biggest copperhead I ever saw, but I could tell he was trying to get away so I let him go. Have always wondered if I'd been shod and not felt the snake whether I would have been bitten if the snake couldn't "run" away.

A guy out east of Stanton lost a Lab to a rattle snake bite a few years back. We have bull snakes right here in the house. I took one off the bathroom floor last week. I took two off the kitchen windowsill within five minutes of each other one time.

On a sandy hillside, just up from a wetland, there are wild dewberries that grow there. I love eating them, but since they grow on the ground, I am always a little hesitant about sticking my hand in there to grab a few. But they are so good.....

The only rattler I've seen in Virginia was near the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Showing property to a prospective buyer, who obviously had no experience with rattlers. I was raised on the Sonoran Desert, was shocked that he kept walking toward the rattle. He hadn't noticed, until I grabbed his arm and jerked him back. Saved us a trip to ER. He didn't buy the land...

On my mountain we only have copperheads that are poisonous. I've killed a few at the house. In the woods, they always take off before I see them. Found a large black snake skin in my shop today. They're welcome to all the rodents they can eat. This one was over 4'.

I've caught a couple of northern ring-necks that snuck into the house. My wife wasn't happy, but they're tiny and harmless.
Northern Ring neck

The only GOOD snake is one that's in the skillet with a dollop of fresh homemade Butter. YUM!


:>)

Michigan has only one rattlesnake, and I'm not sure why, but it is on the endangered species list. It is illegal to do anything to it or with it, if you happen to see one.

No way.....

I grew up in Allegan county next to the Allegan State Game Area. One of my favorite spots to hunt was the Ottawa Marsh. I had several run in with rattle snakes in there over the years. One Sat were we looking for areas to hunt and I stepped over a log and something hit the bottom of my boot as I stepped down and I felt something wiggling under my boot. I looked down and I was standing on one and a big one at that and he was not happy. At the time they were not protected and the guy I was with came over and killed it. It had 7 rattles.
I was in the top of a barn getting ready to put hay in and I grabbed one of the beams and it felt squishy. I raised up to see the coon crap I just put my hand in and came within 3 inches of the biggest black snake I ever saw. I went down faster than I went up. There was 2 of them living in that barn and I saw them many times over the summer

Yea, it kind of makes you think about nature walks in woods, trout fishing in the creek, and mushroom hunting....

I am real sure I saw a Massasauga, years ago on our farm in Branch co. Mi. Also used to see 'Blue Racers', up to 7ft long. What happen to them ? ?

My dad told a story about once he found a big bull snake in the chicken house. He grabbed his 12 guage and fired at the snake's head. As the snake was moving forward, dad led it a bit when he shot. He actually led it too much and put a hole in the wall right in front of the snake.

The snake crawled out through the hole.

I killed thirty two rattlesnakes one summer while putting up hay. Went out one morning after it had rained looking for the neighbors horses that had got in my field and was walking along the fence line. Grass was about knee high and I was getting tired of walking thru it so I stopped to rest for a minute. Looked around and didn't see the horses anywhere. Soon I heard something that sounded like an electrical short buzzing. Probably stood there for five minutes trying to figure out what was buzzing. Finally looked at the ground and saw what it was. I hadn't noticed when I stopped but I had stopped on about a dinner plate sized patch of bare ground next to the fence. There on both sides of my left foot I saw three round coils sticking out of both sides of my irrigating boot. Took me a few seconds to figure out what it was. I always packed a pistol with me but I had left it at the house because it looked like it might rain again. All I had was a shovel. I stepped down real hard and then stepped back carefully. There was a poor rattlesnake trying to figure out why he was so flat. I dispatched him very quickly. It was a good thing it was pretty cool that morning and he wasn't able to move very fast. He had eight or nine buttons on him.

Wow! How the he$$ do they get in your house? That stinks. I couldent have that.

Old stone cellar. Nothing to stop them really. The wife doesn't care for the situation,but she lives with it. She doesn't go in the bathroom at night without turning on a light.

Dad and I were baling hay, him driving, me on the wagon at a neighbor's place. The head and about a foot of a sliced off snake crawled off the front of the wagon. Don't know what kind. Another time dad and I were baling wheat straw at another neighbor's near a ditch. Saw two racer type snakes moving thru the stubble with their heads above the stubble. Wasn't too unusual to see a dried up snake in the feed bunk that the cows left behind from baled hay.

Mom's favorite story about one of her uncles was his fear of snakes. He was plowing a pair of lazy mules that required the whip once and a while. The fella stopped and was rolling himself a quirley when something rustled behind him. When he looked,there was a large snake at his feet. After running near half a mile he jumped a fence which caused the whip that was looped on his wrist to fly up and overhead. Mom said he layed by the fence several minutes before regaining his composure.

Our farmhouse is right about 100 years old. Keeping snakes out is impossible. They are in the cellar, the attic, the kitchen, yadda. SWMBO was upstairs showering. She steps out of the shower to dry off about that time she sees movement. It seems a six foot black snake was o. The kitchen roof (just even with the kitchen window) and peering I to the bathroom window. Needless to say I had to get on the kitchen roof with the lopers to take care of him.

In my area there is suppose to be timber rattlers but I've never seen one. What we do have a bumper crop of is copperheads. In warm weather you pay attention any time you turn over a rock and at night you never go barefoot or walk without a flashlight. One evening I killed nine of them within 75 feet of my house.

We had a rat snake in the basement when we had just moved into the house. I was in the truck taking the trash off and my wife called me having a fit, so I had to come back and find it. Now that was a trick in itself considering I don't like snakes any more than she does. Finally got my nephew over and we located it and he killed it. I found the hole he got in and plugged it. I don't think we could live here if that happened again.

Nowadays I generally will let them go if I know they are not poisonous. We do have copperheads here and some cottonmouths, very rarely do we see a rattler. I hunt some ways south of here and we have all killed our share of rattlers there.
When I was a kid my Dad killed some huge copperheads on our place which is only a mile or so from where I live now.

I took a female friend for a ride through the woods in my old J10 Jeep years ago. We had to go through one place, between two fields, that had quite a few overhanging limbs, so I recommended she roll up the window. Unfortunately for her she didn't. I shot through the tight spot into the next field and began to circle back when she began to bounce around in her seat belt, trying to get it unhooked, and to scream. Not knowing what was going on, but figuring it had to be bad if she was trying to bail out, I just hit the brakes, stalling the truck out (didn't bother with hitting the clutch), and began to bail myself. By that time she's standing outside the door, in waist high brush, still shaking and all but hyperventilating. As I opened my door I happened to look down and see a green snake, about a foot long, come slithering across the floor board. He hit my side of the truck, and kept on going right out the door into the brush.

Seeing him hit the ground, she realized she was standing on the ground too....I don't think I've ever seen anyone get back in a vehicle as fast as she did.

Turns out the little green snake had come in the window off one of the trees, hit her leg, and then dropped to the floor, just milliseconds before she began screaming and bailing out. I think the whole incident took, maybe one to two minutes total, but it was one of the funniest things I have ever seen happen.

Dad knew a cook who wanted to cook a rattle snake. Dad killed a fairly large rattler. He removed the head and delivered it to the restaurant. So everyone gathered around to see the snake. When whatever the snake was in, was opened, the snake moved. From what was told to Dad, people went in all directions to get away from the snake. Stan

Snake storys ya say , Well here is one for ya . Years back i get a call from a guy way soth of me as he heard i worked on tractors and that i could usually fix them where they sat . He had heard about me thru a friend of a friend of a friend and so on . He had a 706 diesel that was dead in a field way back in the hills about two hours drive from me . Told him up front that there would be travel time charged plus hourly rate . He said that would be fine by him as he could get nobody to come out since where the tractor was at and as he put it your going to need a four wheel drive to even get to it. Well i told him when i could come and get started on what it was going to need and how long it would take . So one morning i set out to go find this dead tractor in the back country way down in the old coal fields . He was not kidding about needing four wheel drive to the point that i was just about to put the tire chains on . well i made it to the tractor and wright off i could tell that it had been setting for a long time . Decent old 706 with a year round cab on it decent tires but the paint was a bit weathered . So i get my tool boxes open dig out the jumper cables and get them plugged into my truck and walk over to the tractor and stepped up on the step and went to open the door and just happened to look at the seat and there were two copperheads layen there and one on the floor by the door . Needless to say i did not open the door and just backed away from the tractor looking more at the ground around the tractor . Unplugged my jumper cables and put them away and closed up the tool boxes and got back in my truck and started to move the truck around packing down the tall grass many times over while waiting for the owner to show up. when he got there i was still setting in my truck . He pulled up along side of me and asked me what i thought about what was wrong with his tractor . Told him i did not know and i would not know till HE got rid of the new owners of said tractor . He looked at me kind of funny and what are you talking about , i told him that i saw three copper heads in the cab and untill they were gone along with any aunts uncles cousin, brother, sisters mom and dad and both sets of grand parents i was NOT working on that tractor . He did not believe me and he had to go see for himself , yep he saw them and he was faster about getting back into his truck then i was . Handed him a bill for time waisted and told him that once HE got rid of them to call me and THEN i would work on his tractor . Three weeks later he called me and said that the tractor was NOW SNAKE FREE and all tall grass was now well ground up brown dirt . So back down i go and this time i took along my one revolver with snake shot , Bet non of you ever worked on a tractor while packing a side arm. Yep i fixed his tractor it was a broken input shaft on the injection pump , Hew had been working the tractor hard and he got caught in a down pour and the cold rain hitting the injection pump caused the head to seeze and it twisted the shaft off . A rebuilt pump solved the problem and he as back in business . So word to the wise LOOK BEFORE YOU JUST JERK OPEN THE CAB DOOR , one never knows what maybe layen in there.

I used to hunt our Diamond back rattlers and sell the hides. I rigged up a contraption that I would slip over their heads( you need another person to keep their attention), pull the rope that was attached to a lever that pulled the head onto a blade that would cut their heads off slicker than sno.... Sometimes if on the road I would just put them in the bed of the truck. You could watch them crawl all over the bed even with the head cut off.

Arkansas is home for every poisonous snake indigenous to the US except the coral snake. This time of year they are very active and it's not uncommon to see most of them in one day. You learn to respect them but not fear them. When I unroll hay in the winter I usually find a few that were baled. The largest that I've seen was a 6 1/2' diamondback rattler that the highway crew killed at my driveway.

That sounds like the instance of a crew putting up wind generators. The nacelle or main part with the generator had sat on the ground, then lifted into place 300 feet up. When one of the guys went in there he found a rattler had taken up residence. Don't how fast he got back down.

Grew up on old farmstead in eastern Iowa killed many rattlers around the house and buildings. Killed so many in and around a small tool shed we called it the Rattlesnake Barn.

(quoted from post at 21:09:47 05/12/15) Michigan has only one rattlesnake, and I'm not sure why, but it is on the endangered species list.[b:b7798c4bcb] It is illegal to do anything to it or with it, if you happen to see one[/b:b7798c4bcb].

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Yeah, right. :roll: Unless you're an idiot and go bragging about killing one, who would know? And if anyone asked me, I just happened to accidently run it over with my tractor. :wink:

Last week I was mowing at the extreme south end of my property and the mower scared a 5' Blue Racer out of the tall grass. It was a beautiful baby/ teal blue zipping along with its head about 14" off the ground. About 8 years ago a friend went pheasant hunting about 1/2 mile south of us in some fields near a creek that is the outlet for Joslin lake (which I live about 100 yards west of), and another guy was hunting there also. Mike had just followed him out of the fields and the guy reached down under his car where he had placed a pheasant he had shot earlier and got bit by a Massasaugua rattlesnake. They like to live near water or marshy areas.

Working on a road widening project near Ashley, in the Saginaw State Game Area last year, there was Blue Racers everywhere. Saw one about 6' long, biggest snakr I've ever seen, and man was it blue! Every round I made with the truck, you would see another one that had been run over by the truck in front of me in his rotation. The grader widening the road must have stirred their holes up, that was also the most snakes I have ever seen at one time, and I don't like snakes.

Ross

So much for that romantic encounter lol

Ross

What a great bunch of "Snake Stories". Thanks everyone, I enjoyed reading them. I was out this morning walking the potato fields when at the end of the row there was about a two foot long "Blow snake" sunning himself. This is the kind of snake that flattens out it's head, and hisses at you. My dog stepped on it, and the snake just sat there.

A local young couple bought a nearby house from the estate of the old guy's family after his long nursing home stay. During clean up, they found hundreds of snakes and molts in and around the house, in the walls, attic, basement, etc. Still surprised they continued with the rehab and live there today.

Back in the early 90's when I was in my 20's a buddy and I rented a house in Port Clinton, Ohio. It was a prime location located across the street from a beach, and we had a marina out the back door where his boat was docked (paradise for 2 single guys). Next door was an old bait shop turned into a Scuba Shop, but it still had the old bait cooler out back (size of the box off a box truck). One spring my parents came to visit. My Dad hates snakes....when I say hate that doesn't even begin to describe how he feels about them. He decides to cut between the house and the Scuba Shop one afternoon to meet me at the boat. As I watch him coming between the buildings I see him jump like 6 feet backwards followed by a trail of kicked up sandy dirt. Confused I walk up and see the whole ground is covered with baby Lake Erie water snakes that were coming from under the old cooler. Dad was out in the driveway white as a sheet and shaking. I didn't stop laughing for a while! He walked to long way round everytime after that!

Snakes never bothered me, they were always around. When I see a snake, it's no different than seeing a mouse or anything else of that nature. Trying to get the kids to warm up to them, and bugs in general. I had them looking for a washer I dropped in the grass yesterday, when I heard a scream. One touched a grub.

Here's a little guy I found curled up in the hitch when I went to put the trailer on the tractor.