milk snake or copperhead?

[osagebow]

Fielded this on FB a few times recently, figured I'd do a PSA here. The milk snake is a harmless good guy that will actually eat baby copperheads. Note the "hershey kisses" on the CH and lack of silver grey bands. The triangle solid copper head is a giveaway, also.
Baby coppers have a neon tail tip to lure lizards to their doom. Haters gonna hate, but that sure puts the B.A. in " Baby".

 

[Ashful]

I saw a snake come out from under one of my wood stacks two or three weeks ago, and it had a copper-colored head, but I told myself the patterning (as much as I could see, it was in the shadows on a very bright sunny day) was wrong. Now that I look at your photos, I'm convinced what I have living near my barn (it retreated under some doug firs) is a copperhead.

 

[Mrs. Krabappel]

Juvie black rat snakes also resemble copperheads

 

[Warm_in_NH]

Just garter snakes around here. The house we're remodeling seems to have quite a few of them inside it.
Every time we relocate one outside another o one or two or three show up. All over the place outside too.
It's a second home for some people that will loose their cookies when a snake slithers out from under their fridge.
I warned them, husband won't tell wife and says it shouldn't be an big deal. Lol.

 

[Adios Pantalones]

Yup. Leave them all alone- everybody's got their job to do. I rescued a baby garter from my basement a week or so ago. I had a customer over, and ran to the basement for a bag and there it was trying to get under the washing machine- I bagged him up, hung it on a doorknob, and let it go later... it started going back for the bulkhead. Dumbass.

(broken image removed)

We have tons of these around here- hard to misidentify them

Here's one biting off maybe more than he can swallow

 

[Jags]

Snakes. Yuck.

 

[bmblank]

Snakes don't bother me one bit. Spiders on the other hand...

 

[bassJAM]

I'm amazed how many people around here assume that anything that isn't a black snake or garter is a copperhead if it's on land or a water moccasin if it's in the water. I've spent a huge chunk of my life in the woods and wading streams and have yet to see a poisonous snake around these parts. I don't generally mind snakes, but I'm also thankful that there's a slim chance that I'll have to deal with poisonous one's around here.

 

[Adios Pantalones]

The milk snake doesn't look anything like a copperhead to me. They do, however look a lot like a coral snake- that's what the "red next to yellow..." etc applies to

 

[Soundchasm]

We've been doing pretty well in the snake department for a few years now. The waterfall was turned into a nursery a year or two ago by Northern Water snakes. I had to work pretty hard to believe they weren't copperheads. The water snakes aren't venomous but they're ill-tempered... I've seen perhaps five in the rocks of the waterfall. Had a funny moment in the stacks by the fence where there was a water snake on top of the tarp covering the splitter, and when I moved it, a couple more shot out from underneath. And then there was this one lone garter snake curled up inside a coiled extension cord.

I tell folks that if the kindling tries to get away from you, try a different stick.

 

[Ashful]

Copperheads and rattle snakes were common here, generations ago, but development has done them in. I see snakes or snake skins on a weekly basis all summer, but it's almost always a garter snake. However, I do have two interesting snake stories from my past:

1. A rattle snake bit and killed my great-grandfather. I believe my sister still has the rattle from that snake, which he killed. He died a few days after the bite.

2. My father was working on a construction site when I was a little kid, when an excavator unearthed a copperhead den and killed mamma. A few of the guys on site picked up and brought home the babies, probably not realizing how dangerous they were (1970's / pre-internet). Long story short, they got loose / lost in the house, and mom took my siblings and I to grandma's for a few days, while dad scoured the house looking for these snakes. He eventually found both, one dead and one alive, and set the live one free in a field in the rural part of our town. A half dozen years later, they built a development in that field, and the local paper ran an article about an excavator crew finding a large copperhead while digging for the street sewers. The cycle repeats...

 

[jdp1152]

Eastern hognoses are the ones that often get confused for copperheads

 

[briansol]

saw this guy in my garden... i believe its a garter, yes?

 

[begreen]

Yep

 

[Bret Chase]

Just garter snakes around here. The house we're remodeling seems to have quite a few of them inside it.
Every time we relocate one outside another o one or two or three show up. All over the place outside too.
It's a second home for some people that will loose their cookies when a snake slithers out from under their fridge.
I warned them, husband won't tell wife and says it shouldn't be an big deal. Lol.

depending on where you are in central NH, the timber rattler is an actual possibility. I spent the latter half of the 90's living in rural SE Kentucky.... even now, back in Maine, the copperhead avoidance habits still remain, 15 years later.

 

[Warm_in_NH]

Timber rattlers in NH are listed as "critically imperiled".
Last I heard on a radio show was there were about 7 of them that were known to exist.
Growing up on the edge of the everglades in FL, I really enjoy the absence of poisonous snakes around here. Not to mention all the other nasty things in FL.
I'm in FL today, saw what looked like a bee climb out of the ground, the size of a humming bird, took off like a harrier jet, don't think my epi pen would do it if that thing attacked me.

 

[Ashful]

Heh... somewhere on this forum are the stories of a giant European Hornet (or two) my mom shipped to us from Florida, in a rolled up hand made Turkish rug. Scared the hell out of us, since we originally mis-ID'd it as an African (killer) hornet.

 

[Adios Pantalones]

By the way- don't open this link if snakes freak you out

http://sciencealert.com.au/features/20143006-25784.html

 

[begreen]

Heh... somewhere on this forum are the stories of a giant European Hornet (or two) my mom shipped to us from Florida, in a rolled up hand made Turkish rug. Scared the hell out of us, since we originally mis-ID'd it as an African (killer) hornet.

Be very glad the rug didn't come from China. They have some very serious sized hornets there.

 

[Jags]

Be very glad the rug didn't come from China. They have some very serious sized hornets there.
View attachment 134988

Or is it "really small hands"?

 

[Adios Pantalones]

Or is it "really small hands"?

... There's a joke that goes with this... can't be told here...

 

[begreen]

Or is it "really small hands"?

Try one in your brew for size.

 

[Jags]

Gives a whole new meaning to "buzzed".

 

[begreen]

Better hope she doesn't have friends or it will be more like "bombed".

 

[Ashful]

Begreen, one of the two we found in the house after receiving the rug actually wasn't much smaller than the four you show there. This was springtime, so maybe a hibernating queen? I felt that one under my slippered foot, before I even saw it. Felt like I stepped on a small mouse!

Luckily, the Euro hornets are very docile, not likely to attack, unless provoked. The complete opposite of those damn German yellow jackets that plague us, here.