[Goodpasture]

Folks wonder about snakes and bugs and stuff being in Oklahoma and how residents here deal with them. This is from a friends website............

As I pushed into a thicket next to a large rock weir I noticed the snake just lying there not six inches off the left front of the mower deck — not moving, hoping I'd just go on by. It was oblivious to how near it had come to snake heaven eternity.

I wanted that snake to observe and play with for awhile, so I backed out and went to the house for the tongs. When I returned, it had moved on but I was fairly certain I'd run across it again, and hopefully not over it with the mower.

About 20 minutes later I spotted it in some really dense briars on the other side of the weir -- too dense, in fact, for me to extricate it from them when I had it in the tongs. It slipped away and under a large rock, which may have been its regular den, but it was still plainly visible to anyone who knew it was there. Otherwise, it blended in perfectly and would never have been noticed.



My timber rattler temporarily in a plastic tub



I cleared away the growth with a hoe, reached in with the five-foot Gentle Giant tongs, got a good grip on it and pulled it out. At this point, virtually any other venomous or even harmless snake would have been mad as hell and crawling up the tongs for a strike, but not this one.

True to the little-known nature of these otherwise extremely dangerous reptiles, this four-foot timber rattler had only one thing on its mind: Getting the hell away from me. And when it managed to slip out of the tongs on the way to my catch tub, that was still all it had in mind.

I actually had to chase it down to recapture it.

Actually, I'd spent that morning trying to get a decent shot at a bluejay.

Bluejays and crows raid the nests of songbirds; rattlers and other snakes mind their own business and help control the populations of rats and mice. They do occasionally eat the eggs of quail and other birds — and sometimes birds themselves — but that will be forgiven by those of us who are herpetologically inclined.

One must keep those distinctions in mind in his husbandry of the natural world around him, and if I'm biased against jays that's their luck of the draw in my territory.

I doubt I'll make the slightest dent in the bluejay population, but this timber rattler can abide along my spillway as long as it likes.

And we'll likely meet again sometime — hopefully, on the same pleasant terms as this encounter.

You can read more from this articulate, right of right wing, Second amendment freak here.......The Twisted Key Websites

BTW, his shotgun reloading forum is one of the best around, if you are into shotgun reloading............

[debbie at bouontiful]

There all over my property. I've stepped over them before (not realizing until I did). I live in the hills with lots of rocks so they are there. Spring I was watering my lettuce in an above ground bed and under the bed was a curled up timber. I squitted him and he took off. Mind you the bed was next to my back door.