Beech Tree News Network

One of the stories I’ve been told about the farm on which we live is that at one time it was covered with copperheads, until the farmer who lived here brought in a herd of pigs to root them out and kill them.  However he rid the farm of them, I’m grateful.
    Our friend, Bobby Hampton, told us when he lived on the land across the road from us, he had a little Dachshund that would hunt down the poisonous snakes and shake them till their scales rattled—God bless the little thing. 
    I’ve never been a big fan of snakes—even the ones that eat mice and rats, although I do appreciate the favor—and the thought of stepping on a copperhead while I’m picking blackberries makes my blood run cold.  If I can see a snake before stumbling upon one, it usually doesn’t unnerve me, but if one crawls over my foot in the dark on the way back from the barn—an actual event—I will, and did, go screaming to the house like a little girl.
    When I was a kid, growing up on Ashes Creek, in Spencer County, I jumped from a rusted gate, out and over a snake, marked with a yellow and black diamond pattern.  My sister, Lorrie, saw the snake, as well, but when we told our parents they didn’t believe us.  The only diamondback snakes they were familiar with were the Eastern and Western rattlers, and they weren’t indigenous to our area.  It wasn’t until recently that I discovered what I saw was the diamondback water snake.  It’s usually found in the deep southern and western US, but has been spotted as far north as Indiana (www.discoverlife.org>guide=snakes).  The diamondback water snake is nonvenomous, so it won’t kill you if it bites you, but it’s wicked looking, so it could scare you to death.
    A couple of years ago, my husband, Garey and I, put some bird netting over our strawberry bed to keep the deer out of our plants.  Our plant bed is a small 8x8 structure.  Little did we realize what a snake trap it would turn out to be.  The snakes would slither through the small openings in the net, get tangled up and couldn’t crawl back out. Three snakes got caught in the net that season.
    Last year, we put the netting over our sweet potato vines, once again to keep the deer out—which begs the question, why aren’t hunters using strawberry and sweet potato plants in their food plots?  Six different snakes met their fate in the net.  We were able to salvage most of the net for this year’s crop, but some of it had rips and tears, so it was left at the end of the row after the harvest, with intentions of tossing it out later.  This year already, a garter snake, a chicken snake and two black snakes have met their demise in the tangle.  Thank God, we haven’t discovered any copperheads there.
    The thing that is a bit unnerving, however, is the number of snakes on our farm.  I’m always traipsing around out there somewhere, gathering flowers or picking berries or hiking through the woods.  I hardly ever see a snake, and that’s fine by me.  But now that I know they’re there, I’m a little more on edge.  Before blackberry season, I’m going to have to figure out a new strategy, and I have a feeling it’s going to involve bird netting.