# milk snake or copperhead?



## osagebow (Jun 24, 2014)

Fielded this on FB a few times recently, figured I'd do a PSA here. The milk snake is a harmless good guy that will actually eat baby copperheads. Note the "hershey kisses" on the CH and lack of silver grey bands. The triangle solid copper head is a giveaway, also. 
	

		
			
		

		
	




Baby coppers have a neon tail tip to lure lizards to their doom. Haters gonna hate, but that sure puts the B.A. in " Baby".


----------



## Ashful (Jun 24, 2014)

I saw a snake come out from under one of my wood stacks two or three weeks ago, and it had a copper-colored head, but I told myself the patterning (as much as I could see, it was in the shadows on a very bright sunny day) was wrong.  Now that I look at your photos, I'm convinced what I have living near my barn (it retreated under some doug firs) is a copperhead.


----------



## Mrs. Krabappel (Jun 25, 2014)

Juvie black rat snakes also resemble copperheads


----------



## Warm_in_NH (Jun 25, 2014)

Just garter snakes around here.  The house we're remodeling seems to have quite a few of them inside it. 
Every time we relocate one outside another o one or two or three show up. All over the place outside too.
It's a second home for some people that will loose their cookies when a snake slithers out from under their fridge.
I warned them, husband won't tell wife and says it shouldn't be an big deal. Lol.


----------



## Adios Pantalones (Jun 25, 2014)

Yup. Leave them all alone- everybody's got their job to do. I rescued a baby garter from my basement a week or so ago. I had a customer over, and ran to the basement for a bag and there it was trying to get under the washing machine- I bagged him up, hung it on a doorknob, and let it go later... it started going back for the bulkhead. Dumbass.






We have tons of these around here- hard to misidentify them

Here's one biting off maybe more than he can swallow


----------



## Jags (Jun 25, 2014)

Snakes.  Yuck.


----------



## bmblank (Jun 25, 2014)

Snakes don't bother me one bit. Spiders on the other hand...


----------



## bassJAM (Jun 25, 2014)

I'm amazed how many people around here assume that anything that isn't a black snake or garter is a copperhead if it's on land or a water moccasin if it's in the water.  I've spent a huge chunk of my life in the woods and wading streams and have yet to see a poisonous snake around these parts.  I don't generally mind snakes, but I'm also thankful that there's a slim chance that I'll have to deal with poisonous one's around here.


----------



## Adios Pantalones (Jun 25, 2014)

The milk snake doesn't look anything like a copperhead to me. They do, however look a lot like a coral snake- that's what the "red next to yellow..." etc applies to


----------



## Soundchasm (Jun 26, 2014)

We've been doing pretty well in the snake department for a few years now.  The waterfall was turned into a nursery a year or two ago by Northern Water snakes.  I had to work pretty hard to believe they weren't copperheads.  The water snakes aren't venomous but they're ill-tempered...  I've seen perhaps five in the rocks of the waterfall.  Had a funny moment in the stacks by the fence where there was a water snake on top of the tarp covering the splitter, and when I moved it, a couple more shot out from underneath.  And then there was this one lone garter snake curled up inside a coiled extension cord.

I tell folks that if the kindling tries to get away from you, try a different stick.


----------



## Ashful (Jun 26, 2014)

Copperheads and rattle snakes were common here, generations ago, but development has done them in.  I see snakes or snake skins on a weekly basis all summer, but it's almost always a garter snake.  However, I do have two interesting snake stories from my past:

1.  A rattle snake bit and killed my great-grandfather.  I believe my sister still has the rattle from that snake, which he killed.  He died a few days after the bite.

2.  My father was working on a construction site when I was a little kid, when an excavator unearthed a copperhead den and killed mamma.  A few of the guys on site picked up and brought home the babies, probably not realizing how dangerous they were (1970's / pre-internet).  Long story short, they got loose / lost in the house, and mom took my siblings and I to grandma's for a few days, while dad scoured the house looking for these snakes.  He eventually found both, one dead and one alive, and set the live one free in a field in the rural part of our town.  A half dozen years later, they built a development in that field, and the local paper ran an article about an excavator crew finding a large copperhead while digging for the street sewers.  The cycle repeats...


----------



## jdp1152 (Jun 27, 2014)

Eastern hognoses are the ones that often get confused for copperheads


----------



## briansol (Jun 27, 2014)

saw this guy in my garden...  i believe its a garter, yes?


----------



## begreen (Jun 27, 2014)

Yep


----------



## Bret Chase (Jun 29, 2014)

Warm_in_NH said:


> Just garter snakes around here.  The house we're remodeling seems to have quite a few of them inside it.
> Every time we relocate one outside another o one or two or three show up. All over the place outside too.
> It's a second home for some people that will loose their cookies when a snake slithers out from under their fridge.
> I warned them, husband won't tell wife and says it shouldn't be an big deal. Lol.



depending on where you are in central NH, the timber rattler is an actual possibility.  I spent the latter half of the 90's living in rural SE Kentucky.... even now, back in Maine, the copperhead avoidance habits still remain, 15 years later.


----------



## Warm_in_NH (Jun 29, 2014)

Timber rattlers in NH are listed as "critically imperiled". 
Last I heard on a radio show was there were about 7 of them that were known to exist. 
Growing up on the edge of the everglades in FL, I really enjoy the absence of poisonous snakes around here. Not to mention all the other nasty things in FL.
I'm in FL today, saw what looked like a bee climb out of the ground, the size of a humming bird, took off like a harrier jet, don't think my epi pen would do it if that thing attacked me.


----------



## Ashful (Jun 29, 2014)

Heh... somewhere on this forum are the stories of a giant European Hornet (or two) my mom shipped to us from Florida, in a rolled up hand made Turkish rug.  Scared the hell out of us, since we originally mis-ID'd it as an African (killer) hornet.


----------



## Adios Pantalones (Jul 1, 2014)

By the way- don't open this link if snakes freak you out

http://sciencealert.com.au/features/20143006-25784.html


----------



## begreen (Jul 2, 2014)

Joful said:


> Heh... somewhere on this forum are the stories of a giant European Hornet (or two) my mom shipped to us from Florida, in a rolled up hand made Turkish rug.  Scared the hell out of us, since we originally mis-ID'd it as an African (killer) hornet.


Be very glad the rug didn't come from China. They have some very serious sized hornets there.


----------



## Jags (Jul 2, 2014)

begreen said:


> Be very glad the rug didn't come from China. They have some very serious sized hornets there.
> View attachment 134988



Or is it "really small hands"?


----------



## Adios Pantalones (Jul 2, 2014)

Jags said:


> Or is it "really small hands"?


... There's a joke that goes with this... can't be told here...


----------



## begreen (Jul 2, 2014)

Jags said:


> Or is it "really small hands"?


Try one in your brew for size.


----------



## Jags (Jul 2, 2014)

Gives a whole new meaning to "buzzed".


----------



## begreen (Jul 2, 2014)

Better hope she doesn't have friends or it will be more like "bombed".


----------



## Ashful (Jul 3, 2014)

Begreen, one of the two we found in the house after receiving the rug actually wasn't much smaller than the four you show there.  This was springtime, so maybe a hibernating queen?  I felt that one under my slippered foot, before I even saw it.  Felt like I stepped on a small mouse!

Luckily, the Euro hornets are very docile, not likely to attack, unless provoked.  The complete opposite of those damn German yellow jackets that plague us, here.


----------



## firebroad (Jul 3, 2014)

I always am amazed the generally people are freaked/grossed out by snakes, spiders, bats and bees--some of them most helpful creatures in the animal kingdom.
Of course, I don't want to see them in the house, either, but I won't kill them.


----------



## Ashful (Jul 3, 2014)

Bees, good.  Relatively harmless to us, and a necessary part of our ecosystem.

German yellow jackets are dangerous, aggressive, sometimes deadly, and an invasive species.  If I see them, I kill them.

With snakes, it's all about location and species.  A garter in the garage gets captured and set free outside.  A copperhead or rattler anywhere on my property, should that ever happen, would generate a call to someone who could safely remove it.  We have too many kids running around to take a chance with having a deadly snake in the yard.


----------

