Monday, June 24, 2013

Quite the Imitator


Steve's post from a couple of days ago on Wildlife in Your Yard reminded me of an encounter we had with a gopher snake three summers ago (please correct me if I misidentified the species). Connie and I had returned from fly fishing on the South Platte just after dark one evening when we surprised this fellow in the garage. More accurate to say we surprised each other. He put on his best rattlesnake imitation for us. If you have never seen this display, it's incredible the volume of hissing noise they make to distract you from the fact they don't have rattles.


You can see here that he's not really very big. We raked him up and moved him safely to an area where we hoped he had happy hunting and didn't interact with the dogs. 

4 comments:

Chas S. Clifton said...

You have a purpose-built snake rake?

Connie said...

Chas - It's a manure rake repurposed as a snake mover! LOL

Reid Farmer said...

Yup. Works well for poop or snakes.

Anonymous said...

Your Bullsnake/Gophersnake is OUR "Pinesnake" here in the Southeast! In fact, we here in the Swamp section of the N. C. zoo are captive breeding one of the most endangered subspecies of Pinesnakes in North America--the Louisiana Pinesnake. I really like these guys, and boy howdy ARE THEY great bluffers! But despite lots of handling, I've only had one bite me so far--one of our little hatchlings! Bit the blood outta me too, little devil! The eggs these guys lay are SO BIG, they make you HURT just contemplating what it must feel like to lay one--much less several of them at once, as the females tend to do!....L.B.