Saturday, August 18, 2007

M - Stealthy serpent slithers slowly

There's nothing like wallowing around in semi-murky water when you know there is a snake sharing the same watering-hole. As noted before, we have been rescuing baby bass primarily as the water levels drop in this heat. In the process, we've caught a few crawdads, lots of perch, and a few very large shiner minnows.

Back to the snake...we had seen this guest before. We knew he wasn't more than about 2ft long and I could tell he was just a harmless diamond-back water snake. Nonetheless, it is a snake and a bit disconcerting to have in our presence. We've seen larger snakes for certain. Several times a year we see at least one large female diamond-back water snake that's pushing five feet long. It's a big one but still pretty much harmless to us (according to Aaron over at www.oksnakes.org).

It took a couple of attempts to catch the little booger so we could remove him safely. Nonetheless we got 'em and released him back up in the pond and I'm sure by now he's right back down where we didn't want him in the first place!

4 comments:

Dana said...

Kill the snake!
Kill the snake!
Kill the snake!

Dustin said...

We had a large creek behind our house growing up that occasionally would dry up (thanks in part to a leaky dam downstream). The 10' wide, 1ft deep pools would fill full of mostly carp which seemed at the time to be around 20 pounders but was most likely closer to 5lb. We'd go in with our bowie knives and just start stabbing and throwing. It sounds harsh but unfortunately there was no place to relocate them and it was better than letting them starve to death. We're talking at least 20 or more fish per small pool (and there were many pools, plus at the time we didn't know of anyone that ate carp).

But yes, kill the snake!

The Williams said...

You are a lot braver than we are. Harmless or not the kids and I would have run screaming in the other direction. I agree completely. Kill the snake!

Ledbetter Fam said...

I agree Dana. Wade would have LOVED that. If you haven't already, read my posts about him wanting to be a herpetologist. He would have had so much fun with you guys!

JB