EWWW!!! OMG, EWWW!! I'll never be the same again!!!

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vintagekitchen

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Ok, time for kerosene and a match, I realize now that all the little home repairs and remodeling over the years were just a bandaid, time to torch it and start over!

Why you ask? Well due to our lovely super hot drought conditions, they have been mentioning on the local radio that people needed to be very watchful, that reptiles have begun invading local homes seeking relief from the heat. I have only listened with half an ear, up until today. Being surrounded by ACRES of corn, there are always mousetraps and poison about, since the little buggers want to invade year round, so I figured any snakes around here would eat a poison mouse, and boom, bye bye snake...

I was so very very wrong...

I came home this afternoon from a family get together, and started to walk down the hall, when I noticed something sticking out from under the hall closet door. Now thats not right. I would never put the vacuum away with the door closed on the cord. Oh wait, the cord is white, thats not white. OMG SWEET JESUS AND MOTHER MARY IT'S THE BACK HALF OF A SNAKE!!!!

My first instinct of course was to wet myself and cry hysterically, fortunately I was able to overcome that urge before either event happened. I ran back to the kitchen and grabbed the biggest butcher knife, intending to chop the beast in half, and got back just in time to see the tip of its tail disappear under the door.. OMG NOOOOO!! THAT CLOSET IS HUGE AND FULL! All the Christmas decorations are stored in the depths of that huge closet that once housed an ancient and dangerous furnace prone to suicide attempts. Plenty of places for it to hide. This is bad, very very bad..

Luckily my aunt and her boyfriend had just pulled into the driveway, so I leaned out the door and shouted some semi-coherent panicked gibberish, that after a few moments they realized must be a sign of distress, or insanity, but in either case they should come right over. Once I was able to explain what had happened, the aunt's boyfriend went outside and got the hoe from the shed, and then stood ready, while I began grabbing box after box, and literally THROWING them out the back door at the end of the hall. He attempted to get me to slow down and be careful, stating that some of the items may be irreplaceable, at which point I said everything is replaceable, I want that thing DEAD!

We finally spotted the hideous slithering beast, at the back of the closet, next to the artificial tree box. Of course the tree is huge, so its box is huge, and weighs approximately the same amount of pounds as a volkswagon Beetle. I grabbed the box, which I can normally barely drag, and thanks to all that lovely adreneline, pulled it from the closet and hurled it out the back door in one fluid movement.

This unnacustomed air travel apparently rattled the creeping foul things wits enough to slow it down, as the aunt's boyfriend was able to knock the box open and kill the snake before it could finish crawling away.

I will be spending tommorrow fully snake proofing and hopefully in the process mouseproofing the house, however I beleiveI will spend tonight doing my best to crawl into a large bottle of gin, dragging my frazzled nerves behind me..

Ewww!
 
 
First snake, apparently.  ;-)

Lots of snake stories around here, friends & family ... variously in the yard, crawling up a brick wall, in the garage, on the patio, in a toilet (for real), in the house thither and yon.  Encounters are never quite exactly expected, but one deals and moves on.
 
I hate hate hate snakes, and the fact that one was in my house creeeps me out to no end, just the idea that I could have picked it up in an armful of laundry or that it could have crawled into the bed at night, eww.. Never ever had one in the house before, got to make sure I never ever see one in the house again..
 
One of my grandmothers was quite afraid of snakes, but being a farm housewife on a very large farm meant she had to confront them on occasion and yes, the hoe was her weapon of choice. One exception was when she saw a snake in the road in front of the driveway as she returned from a trip to the store. She managed to bag it with her '55 Chevy 210 but it was pregnant and the baby snakes started crawling down the road. Luckily for Grandma hardly anyone else used that road and she was able to spend the next half-hour going forward and back in the Chevy to squish them all.
 
hydralique

Your gramma is a lady after my own heart. I have seen my mother out on the farm throw her riding mower into high gear and chase one down if she spotted it out in the yard while she was mowing... I love a lady with passion for what she does, lol..
 
Only 2- and 4-legged creatures are allowed in my house. No 6s, 8s, or zeroes.

Cool spring when I was 9, I caught a snake in the yard. He/she seemed friendly so I put it in a box on the porch. Where it stayed until it got hungry and went hunting. It liked wrapping around my arm. Later I found out it was only because I was warm, not because the snake liked me. Or did it?
 
If your a gardener or a clothesliner, it easy to carry a reptile in, in either clothing or your garden harvest basket.  Its good to have the girls (feline).  they hear the smallest noise, knock on wood never had a snake. but we have carried in the those big old outside roaches, you could put a saddle on.   They ferret out the tiniest noise and investigate.  Their behaviour usually dictates what weapon you need  to do the job.   alr
 
Oh, my word.

Snakes--not a fan. My intrepid brother had one of those big, ugly snakes in a cage as a pet. No kidding, a pet! Who in their right mind wants to have a reptile nearby? At any rate, the &**&^%* escaped its cage and promptly went into a hole in the bathroom wall that I was, naturally, retiling!!

After a lot of thought, I captured an end of the the thing (I still don't know which end) with the shop vac, flung it across the room, and hacked it to death with my garden hoe. To this day, I've not been forgiven. I didn't care--Keith ain't sleepin' in a house with a loose snake!! He stuck to dogs from then on.
 
OK. Here is something you've probably heard since age 1: They are more afraid of you then you are of them.

Rather than killing the poor thing, I suggest you find a way to trap the snake, then drive it away and let it go in some sort of bushland. You could also call a local person who takes care of snakes for a small fuel tip.

Because we have a Biologist/Wildlife oriented person in the house, we know what the best thing is to do. This person also used to volunteer for snake removal in our old localilty. Obviously, there are certain groups of people that belong to the most populated countries on earth who would've over-reacted even more in this situation. They would've called the local wildlife guy, and said they had an Aligator or Crocodile in their house and gotten the whole neighbourhood out of their hosues to see everything! Believe me THIS HAS HAPPENED!

Please, don't kill the snake. It doesn't deserve to die. It is only looking for food. If you are getting snakes in the house, you may very well have a mice/rat problem OR it has let itself in by accident.

There are animals you should and should'n' kill. Snakes/Reptiles are generally on the non-kill list, unless you find them appetizing (even then, you might be breaking laws setup to protect the animal). Roaches, Ants, Flies and other disgusting creatures (these find themselves in sewers, rubbish dumps etc), I am more than happy to see be "moved onwards" in their world!
 
One time I did find a baby Cottonmouth in our transmitter site-I picked him up with a shovel and put him outside.For the critters-buildings and houses are for PEOPLE-the Great Outdoors is for creatures!I have found lots of snakes here-the site is built on a former swamp.Its always damp here-esp after a rain.and LOTS of snapping turtles,crawfish(mudbugs as some here call them),eels,frogs and toads-and those large cockroaches-you step on one and it leaves a greenish-brown stain on the floor!and there are Black Widows in the transmitter blower rooms-they love the heat and bugs!And of course-LOTS of mice!sometimes they BANG in the transmitter!-or they sucked into a fan or blower.
 
Snakes, unless they are poisonous, I don't have a problem with. It is a shame we generally come upon them by surprise. As stated above, they generally are following the scent of a mouse into your house. Frankly, a snake does less damage than a rodent inside and, outside, they do a very good job of keeping the rodent population in check. It is a shame that most people's first instinct is to kill a snake. I put a lot of the blame for this on the creation story in Genesis. Leave it to religion. When the Church declared cats to be the devil's animal (as if), they were killed off. What happened next? The mouse and rat population boomed and the black death wiped out millions of people; another case of stupid people listening to evil stupid people and acting in their own worst interest; sorta like today.
 
As long as!

It was not a rattler or copperhead, I would just grab it firmly behind the head and carry it out side, im terrified of wasps ETC, not at all scared of snakes.
 
It moves, but has no legs, thats the DEVIL right there!

Yeah, a snake would have me running for the hills screaming like a little girl, and thats the only time you will see that!...lol,...can't stand spiders either!...

and yet I wear a spiderman outfit and undies....still in therapy over that one!.....lol

NOW, if it was a snake in someones....wait, were in SUPER....if there was a so called snake hidden behind a zipper, thats another story!...and another forum
 
I'm terried of the Black Widow's Cousin, the Redback spider.

I've had them come dancing out of behind stuff we I've walked into their webs.

Queue up the loudest Ned Flander's scream you ever heard. Same applies if I see a Wasp/Hornet/flying beetle thing!
 
We have a lot of copperheads around here.
One of my neighbors brought home a flat of flowering plants a few years ago and left them on her driveway overnight. The next morning she went to put the plants in the ground and sure enough, overnight a copperhead crawled in the flat and she got bit.

We've never seen a snake on our yard, but our neighbors have. They usually like to hang out in the landscaping near the a/c unit. Our vet said that if you have a lot of dog urine in your yard it will keep the snakes away. We have 4 large dogs so maybe that's why we never see them.

Then there was a woman at the front of our subdivision that had a coral snake come in the dryer vent which was next to the gravel landscaping in her house and came out the bottom of the dryer. Coral snakes are pretty small but very poisonous.
Her husband was even more scared of snakes than she was. She was unloading some laundry when the snake came out of the bottom of the dryer. The screaming between her and her husband triggered the neighbors to call the police as they thought something was going on inside the house. It was 11pm on a Sunday night when this happened. The police came and basically laughed at her and her husband and told them "it's only a snake" and told them to call a snake removal service and they left. So at 3am a snake removal guy shows up and takes the snake away. [this post was last edited: 7/30/2012-09:25]
 
You all will probably report me to PETA...there's a natural stream across the street from my house...in the dry part of the summer the copper heads and water mosicians come out of the creek to my yard to enjoy the water sprinkler. One summer I was weeding the flower bed and one of the little darlings struck at me, then last summer my lab who was 11 at the time got bit in the leg..it was very painful and she was really sick for a few days..leg was huge for about a week..did I say that I live in town..not the country. So...I keep a can of Raid Roach spray handy..give them a good spray..it kills them fairly fast. If I found a snake in my house I'd probably have a can of Raid in every room and sleep with a can under my pillow!!! I've leared that where there's one...it has a partner some where close by. I also have 2 out door cats that bring at least one half eaten snake up to the front porch every week.
 
Do you know

what kind of snake it was?  About 10 years ago I reached into my Mama's cabinet for a baking sheet and found a shed snake skin.  Turned out a four foot black snake had managed to crawl into Mama's house and was hiding in the kitchen cabinet.  We were able to take the thing out then I took everything out of the kitchen and either scrubbed it, put it in the dishwasher with sani-rinse on, or placed everything in the washer on hot water with clorox.  Mama's cabinets were also scrubbed with hot water and clorox.  That was one heck of a weekend.  On the advise of a good friend who is a snake lover I went to the store and bought a bunch of steel wool pads (not SOS pads but regular steel wool you use when sanding furniture or cabinets with when refinishing) and crammed steel wool into every opening I could find.  No more snakes.  My friend said snakes hate steel wool.  Oh, BTW, had that been a rattler or copperhead I would probably have soiled in my pants!  Black and king snakes don't bother me but I'm not keen of poisionous snakes.    Back in 1982 a friend and I were hiking on and around Grandfather Mountain, NC.  I picked up my leg and for some reason stopped and just happened to look down just in time to see a timber rattler slither under my boot where my boot had just been.  He was a young rattler not very long but just as poisionous as a fully grown adult. Needless to say after I watched him slither out of sight I had to stop and have a snort of Wild Turkey and a smoke.  Hope you find no more surprises! 
 
More people are bitten by snakes in North Carolina than anywhere else in the country.

If your dog gets bit by a snake, take it to the vet. The vet will administer a steroid shot which will relieve the pain as well as the swelling very quickly. There is always a chance of a limb infection in dogs when they get bit by snakes.

You can also "de snake" a dog. This is specialized training where dogs are taught to avoid snakes at all costs.
 
Having lived in California my entire life, the only really dangerous snakes I've ever been around are rattlers which generally have a built-in "back off" audible warning system. It's scary stuff to hear about the venomous snakes some of you find lurking in your yards...Copperheads and Water Moccasins and more, yikes! I think I'd be affraid to let my Springers out. Snakes don't really bother me having caught a few small Gopher and Garter snakes as a kid. My mom had no fear either. Once when we were at my Aunt & Uncle's cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains we cornered a little yellow and black ribbon snake in a bush, she on one side and me on the other. After convincing her it was not poisonous she grabbed with her hands, what a trouper! Reptiles are interesting but I wouldn't have one as a "pet" today.
 
My house...

...an old farmhouse, sat vacant (with heat) for twenty years, before I did a lot of work in it and moved in in 2007. The cellar, a dug out affair and all mud, is not my favorite place to be. When I was cleaning out the basement early on, I found a number of molted black snake skins "down there." My electrician was doing work down there, moved an old fruit crate and found a snake in it. I know that black snakes are beneficial in keeping mice under control, but having them in my basement was just too close for comfort. I got a couple of cats when I moved in, and they prowl about outside - between the mousers outside, and the dog and me rattling around in the house, I haven't seen a black snake in the basement or outside ever since.

I've only seen one snake this year, a little garter snake, earlier this summer, while mowing. They're sweet, and I gave it safe passage before mowing on.

Now, just last week, I saw my first wood roach (mentioned above), dead, outside. My goodness, that thing was huge -guesstimation was that it was a good inch and a half long. Ish!

Joe
 
Bah.

"They are more afraid of you then you are of them."

This is patently untrue.

Because if it WERE true, every snake who ever spotted a human would be dead of a heart attack.

;-)
 
Don't you have a wildlife service that will come out to catch and collect stray wildlife without harming it?
 
Have only seen two snakes this year; one at the park while hiking, and the other in my back yard.

I don't particularly like them, but my 16 year old neighbor kid is terrified of them. We were moving a crate of stone veneer from the backyard, and there was a little black snake in it. He saw it before me, and he jumped back about 10 feet. He would not go near the crate until he saw the snake crawl away to the flower bed.
 
You have to

figure out how it got in!
I've heard of using steel wool for mice (guess they don't like chewing thru it)

if all this could have been caught on tape ...may have one first place on "funniest home vidio's
 
Wildlife service?

never heard of anything like that around here. The usual response to problem wildlife is fairly simple, shoot it..
 
Copperheads are common in my area-see a lot of them-One time during a transmitter and antenna change-the antenna switcher did not work from the control room-that means you have to run to the switchbay and activate the switcher valves manually.As I ran out the back door-stepped on a copperhead that was resting there or waiting for mice or whatever.I didn't get bitten-but he was upset and sadly-injured.He could move OK-so I got the site shovel-not to kill him-but move him somewhere else.That worked.He was really a beautiful creature-lovely pink and red colors.I so hope he survived.At another station in this area-their engineer called me to help him with a transmitter problem-was able to tell him how to fix it and what parts he needed.In his transmitter-a 1kw Gates 1F-was a dead snake-long dead-he was wrapped around the transmitters modulation transformer-couldn't tell what kind it was-he must have crawled up from the floor vent near the Tx seeking the transmitters heat.the HV inside zapped him-and that was were he was left.
At another station in Baltimore-5Kw AM a snake coiled himself in the "mother hen" phasor coil and was smoking and burning when I got there-the smell was horrible-the transmitter still going.Had to shut it off a few min to remove the snake.The phasor-component that the transmitter feeds into to divide its power to the towers at the station.The "mother hen" coil does this-taps on it for each tower.a vacuum capacitor is connected in parallel with the coil to tune the circuit to the stations frequency.I hope the snake wasn't trying to retune that circuit!The sparking,smelly snake was something me and my freind couldn't forget and still laugh about today.Again the snake was so cooked couldn't tell what it was.
 
Steel wool..

I spent the day going through the house looking for any small opening it or the mice could have been using, and each one I found was jammed full of steel wool, then either had a board nailed over it or was finished being filled in with that "great stuff" expanding foam in a can, depending on the locatin and circumstance. Was actually suprised how many spots I found. You dont really realize how many gaps, cracks, and openings there are in an average home..
 

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