Took a little ride today......... This is why I don't cut much this time of year...... Not my favorite form of wildlife.
Yeah, I split and piled all that Chestnut Oak in my avatar pic two years ago in the summer. Started moving it to the stacks and grabbed a split and felt something softer than wood under the split. Picked up the split and a snake was headed away from me into the pile. I had been beating and banging on that pile for over an hour, and the snake didn't move until I picked up the split he was under. Glad it was a chicken snake (or rat snake) and not a copperhead. When I felt it, it just didn't register in my mind, until I saw the snake.
I'll see your rattler and raise you a few thousand black flies, all flying around your head, getting in your eye's & ears, and biting any exposed skin! But I completely agree with your sentiment, the wood can wait!
The worst in my area are Garden AKA " Garter " snakes have heard there are some Rattlers up in the Adirondacks though. Have a friend who moved to Tenn. from NY a few years back and when he was setting up his table on the patio picked up the umbrella holder and there was some sort of snake in it, scared him so bad he said he screamed like a little girl and it isn't a tiny man. I have a 2600 sq. ft. concrete building that I rent out for storage, concrete floors and blocks and there are always snakes in there in the summer cooling off. Something tells me I would be very weary of any of those snakes you folks have to deal with down south and out west.
It's funny, I moved from the south, and to see some of these big burly friends I have made up here scream and go running over a little garter snake (no poision snakes in ME) is just prolly as funny as them watching me scream and go running while out on the lake ice and having it make some (normal) noise.
I am not a tiny man either and I am very confident no video was taken, so I did not scream like a little girl two years ago . I did go buy me one of those 3 pronged garden cultivator hoe things with a 5 foot handle, because I had always wanted one.
that's when you stack with your drawers off -they'll stay down below. just don't let the neighbors see
I love snakes! Maybe I'm the only one! I had a big black snake living in my woodpile for a couple of years - loved it. No mice nests, rats, and few bugs. Every once in awhile I'll see a poisonous one around but they're usually more interested in getting away from people than anything else.
Just had a garter snake come out of the stacks I was tidying up yesterday. About 18" need less to say it met it's demise.
No offense to you guys petrified of snakes, I don't like the "unexpected" few I come across, and poisonous vipers in close proximity to the yard/house have been eliminated here over the years. All the non-poisonous snakes are beneficial to your surroundings, even the ornery 8' king snake I met a couple weeks ago in my garden got a second chance
I saw a few snakes when I was down there, I kept a close eye out for them, don't know what kind I saw, I just went the other way
basod that's one big king snake. I don't pick up snakes anymore, I tried picking up a rather large gopher snake a few years back, he didn't want any part of that, I came real close to getting bit.......... I had a good friend that was from Mississippi he'd pick up rattle snakes like the were fishing worms.
Yep I saw a couple of bull snakes just the other day. So they are out here too. We also get rattlers around here.
Mag Craft you have prairie rattlesnakes? The ones here are great basin rattlesnakes...........We have bull snakes here too.
Yep Bert. We have the prairie rattler here. I do not think they get quit as big as other rattlers in other parts of the country. That just makes them harder to see.
