Black snakes are very special friends because they keep us safe by hunting and killing pit vipers, the deadly water moccasins (cottonmouth) and copperhead snakes that live on our ranch.
Today we got a visit from our new friend which Janet has named “Leroy”:
Leroy: Our new friend
Leroy is a beauty, over five feet long, and we spent over an hour with him, letting him get used to our scent so that he knows that we will not hurt him.
With a proper homecoming, a black snake will choose to hang around, which is perfect for us since we have had to kill severl deadly vipers in the tall grass this year!
The black snakes will scare away the copperheads and water moccasin. It’s quite a shock to see a snake taking a dip in the swimming pool!
Snakes in a pool: creepy stuff!
This one was just a milk snake, that looks like a water moccasin, but you must be careful to know which snakes to kill. Carolina people have used this poem for centuries:
"Red to yellow, kill a fellow. . . . Red to black, venom lack."
Black snakes love to hunt and kill the water moccasins.
This is what you don't want to see, a deadly snake in a pool.
You can't shoot them without damaging the pool lining, and it hard to bash them to death in the water.
To kill a poisonour snake in a swimming pool you have to scoop them out and blast them with a 14 gague, a lot of trouble . . .
Water moccasin are hard to kill without damaging the pool
The copperheads like swimming also, and they are attrached to pools:
Copperheads like swimming pools too
All in all, there is no better way to keep venenous snakes away than to have a black snake.
Sometimes a friendly black snake will come into your house to hunt mice:
Never, ever kill a black snake
