Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Hopefully, We Won't Have Anymore Visitors.

From here on out the snake that was here yesterday will be referred to as "the visitor". In a scary turn of events, it appears that a member of "the visitors" family was looking for him this morning. My next door neighbor walked out his back door to go for his morning jog & found a 27" replica of "the visitor". He had an unfortunate (for him) incident with Cliff's shovel.  On a happier note & I when I say happier I mean "not nearly as scary as we first thought but still not good at all", we don't think "the visitor" is a water moccasin. After doing lots of research (Dean, not me), he found this





The first pic is a Mississippi Green Water Snake. The second pic is our visitor. They look a lot alike. It says he can be 16-50 inches long. Good thing Dean killed him because as freaked out as I was over the 36 inch one, 50 would drive me to drink, A LOT.

Apparently, these type of snakes like "permanent bodies of water, especially in open country & around open cypress lakes & marshes". Um, ok. I live in Baton Rouge, in a subdivision, in the middle of the city. I have no lake or marsh. I really hope these visitors haven't mistaken my pool for a "permanent body of water". That wouldn't be good. Here's another fun fact. They give birth to 8-34 baby snakes. Do you know what that means?? It means that there are AT LEAST 6 more somewhere out there. I'm concentrating on the the 8 & not so much the 34. I'm hoping they have some sort of sixth sense & know of the demise of their family & will leave the area immediately.

I'm linking to Outdoor Wednesday hoping that someone can positively I.D. "the visitor".
http://asoutherndaydreamer.blogspot.com/2010/06/62-outdoor-wednesday-73.html

9 comments:

  1. Hi Traci, Venomous or non venomous, those snakes are scary looking. Did you get a look at the head of the snake you killed? The big difference would be that the cottonmouth (water moccasin) would have a triangular head as opposed to a water snake that's kinda elongated. I cannot believe they come in a subdivision. I thought that maybe you lived near a lake....Christine

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  2. omg, I can FINALLY POST COMMENTS! I had to get Rich to figure out what setting was wrong. Ok, yea, hey, at least you can say you now know some things about snakes.

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  3. Oh yuck - I'm going to have nighmares now!! Any sort of snake scares me, venomous or not. Hope you don't have any more visitors like that one.

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  4. I've got the same two words as yesterday... HOLY SH!T. What about that drainage/ditch behind y'alls back yard? Doesn't Cliff live on the same side of the street?

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  5. I know Lydia!! I'm sure they are coming from the ditch in the back but I don't understand WHY! There's water in it. Why are they leaving??? Yep, Cliff lives next door.

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  6. Ahhhhhh, I DO NOT do well with visitors. SO scary!

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  7. Oh, gross!!! Hubby saw two snakes in the backyard last weekend when he mowed the grass (it had gotten a little too long) but they got away before he could kill them. AND, I saw one in the parking lot of Kohl's a couple weeks ago, just slithering across the middle of the parking lot, weird! Snakes freak me out, I can't believe I haven't come across any poking around in my gardens, thank goodness.

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  8. I could NEVER live in a place with such large snakes moseying about!

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