Snake Battle: Chapter 3

We didn't lose any more eggs yesterday but I think that was only because Dianne worked from home and was able to check the coop every few hours. She collected three eggs - one each from Coco (huge egg!) and Winnie and one from one of our young Silver Phoenix hens. The SPs are kind of hard to tell apart so it's sort of tough to tell who's doing the laying, maybe more than one them?

When I got home from work I decided to clean out the old hen box hay and put in some new stuff. I really need to change out the hay in the entire coop - getting a little stinky in there. I raked out a bit of straw and there he was - Mr. Black Rat snake all coiled up in the back. GRRRR!!!

I had read a post on the back yard chickens forum that one way to deal with these things is to catch them and then drive them somewhere a good ways away and release them. I really didn't want to kill the guy. They can be beneficial - in fact several folks on the BYC forum said they didn't mind losing an occasional egg to snakes because they do such a good job of controlling the rodent population. Apparently rats and mice can be even more harmful to a chicken flock than a snake. Well, I do mind losing eggs because we only have five chickens and at this poing get only three eggs max a day. So I caught the snake in the same box I used last time, taped up the top of the box, put it in the passenger seat of my car and set off to deposit the creature somewhere far away.

NC State University has some farming education units about four miles from my house and I thought this would be a perfect spot. I turned down the gravel road that winds through the farmland and came to a low spot where the road passes by a creek and some wetlands. I thought this would be a perfect spot. The fact that a turkey education unit was about 100 yards away was even better. Maybe having hundreds of turkeys around, and presumably lots of turkey eggs, would make this place attractive enough to this snake that he wouldn't want to make the miracle journey back to our place.

The actual release of the snake went off without a hitch. I unceremoniously pulled the tape off the box set it on the ground tipped it over and gave it an encouraging shake to get the snake out. I think he spent a few minutes getting his bearings and then slinked off into the tall grass of the wetlands. Driving with the snake in the car was actually a little more nervewracking than catching and releasing him. Have you ever driven a car with a 4.5 foot snake in the passenger seat? Let's just say my attention was divided between watching the road and watching the box. Why did I put him in the passenger seat and not the back you might ask. Well, I figured if this snake gets out of the box while I'm driving I want to know about it. The last thing I want is a snake loose and hidden inside my car - that would kind of suck. It turned out to be a good thing I had the snake in the box next to me. A couple times I heard some snake movements in the box indicating he was exploring options for exiting the box. I gave the box a couple of loud smacks to discourage that activity - while stopped at a red light of course.

I'm very hopeful that this snake won't be back, but there are a couple of discouraging aspects to this story. 1 - how in the heck did this thing get in after all the coop fortification measures that I described in my previous post and what am I going to do to prevent it? I honestly don't know. 2 - I'm not totally sure that this was the same snake I found in the coop the first time. He seemed to have some faint markings that I don't remember from our first encounter. Ugh.