Only good snake is a dead snake; many have succumbed under the heel of my Tony Llamas; let me get one good stomp on that head and DEAD SNAKE.
A good Border Collie or a Blue Heeler is death on them too; they will grab them right behind the head and crack them like a whip; a snake is QUICK; a Border Collie is quicker and a Blue Heeler is even quicker than that.
Cow snakes got terrible thick around here a few years ago; huge big seven-footers as big around as my leg.
I went in a barn one day and no less than fifteen huge ones were on the rafters over my head, laying on top of the rafters sort of zig-zagged around the lathes, with those hideous heads just swaying there, watching me, ready to drop around my shoulders; I have no idea how they could have gotten where they were but that photo of the one hanging beside the door helps explain it.
That year, I was mowing with a 12hp Cub Cadet 129, probably equivalent to the 24hp of today, and a big one slithered out from a vehicle I was mowing around; I purposefully ran over him with the mower and it killed the engine as quick as it killed the big snake.
Just recently, I was laying under a truck with my head right beside the dual rear wheels and right there was a big one wrapped around between the wheels and laced in and out of the slots of the wheels, with his head about two inches from my face; after lopping off that head with my Buck, I like to have never got the rest of him untangled and out from between the tires; I thought I was going to have to remove the outside wheel but finally managed without it.
I have these "doors" over the windows of my horse stalls where I have to swing open the door to pour the feed in the trough inside; quite a few times I have swung open one of those doors and a snake ride out with it and drop around my shoulders --- that will make even a nervy man almost piss his drawers.
As for getting rid of the snakes --- kill every one you see and sooner or later you will get ahead of the population.
I don't know if this has anything to do with it; but, we had this crazy old cat lady move in the neighbor's rent trailer, along with at least two hundred cats; they finally put the old woman in the nut house or the old folk's home, but they didn't take any of the cats --- just left them there.
For the last few years, I see a different cat every time I go outside; they know to stay clear of me else get kicked into the next county or worse.
I don't know whether it has a thing to do with it or not; but, with all these starving cats around, we don't see near the amount of snakes we were seeing.
One thing I know for fact gets rid of snakes === geese; some say Guineas will as well, but I never owned any Guineas.
When I was living at home, the almost new brick house we were living in got overran with Black Snakes.
At any time, there would be two or three hanging alongside and over the outside doors like the one in the photo above.
It seemed like every closet had at least three in it; there were blood-stains on the hard-wood floors where we had smashed in their heads.
They really liked that ice-cold tile floor in the bathroom --- why any idiot would put down tiles as a floor is beyond me --- it triples your heat bill.
We were to the point of just moving somewhere else and let the snakes have it when this old man told my father to get a bunch of Geese.
We didn't think it would help..., I mean .. really??? ... ; however, in desperation, we got about twenty common white barnyard Geese.
They destroyed the garden and there was goose everywhere and they turned the crystal-clear big pond into a feather-covered cess-pool; but, they got RID of the snakes --- ALL the snakes --- and the frogs and the lizards and anything else that wiggled or crawled in front of them.
Within two weeks of getting the Geese, you would have been hard-pressed to find a single snake anywhere on that place.
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