What kind of snake is this?

#201
#201
Tin Man said:
I let snakes live.
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I do also except when they’re poisonous and are hanging around my cabin where my dog and grandkids play. They’ll bite my ass if I try to invade their space. Turn about is fair play if they try to invade mine.

Hold on, think that’s the game warden knocking on the door!
 
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#202
#202
joevol33 said:
They were very common where I'm from in Kentucky, but I've only seen probably 3 in Georgia. I've seen more rattlesnake vacationing in Florida!
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I lived in Phoenix when I was a kid. I think my dad killed 8 rattlers in 2 years. We were about one block from completely uninhabited desert.
 
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#203
#203
joevol33 said:
They were very common where I'm from in Kentucky, but I've only seen probably 3 in Georgia. I've seen more rattlesnake vacationing in Florida!
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In the Tri you basically live at the edge of the woods unless you're right in a city center. So we see copperheads occasionally. My grandparent's houses in Scott County saw them more.

Rattlesnakes are things that avid hikers and hunters talk about. They live here, but I hear as many stories about mountain lions, and they supposedly don't.
 
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#204
#204
JCHateSteve said:
In the Tri you basically live at the edge of the woods unless you're right in a city center. So we see copperheads occasionally. My grandparent's houses in Scott County saw them more.

Rattlesnakes are things that avid hikers and hunters talk about. They live here, but I hear as many stories about mountain lions, and they supposedly don't.
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Completely off topic... but a guard at my site in Arkansas SWEARS he's seen a large black cat there. Except there's no evidence of cougars/mountain lions/panthers of North America EVER being black. He COULD have seen a cougar as they seem to be slowly making their way back up into Arkansas, but it certainly wouldn't have been black.

More likely a bobcat in dark shade so hard to tell, or actually just a big house cat.
 
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#205
#205
Tin Man said:
I let snakes live.
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I typically do the same. I was raised in West Tennessee, and lived out of town until I was 15 or so. Was pretty common to come across snakes. In terms of venomous ones, I saw copperheads and cottonmouths. Copperheads you would see in leaves, under brush, sometimes near roads. Cottonmouths would be any water. Like ponds of any size you'd find them.

More common was to see non-venomous snakes like garter snakes, chicken snake (technically gray rat I think). Chicken snakes came into the house at least a couple of times. I remember one was inside by the front door when I was about 6 during the summer. I saw it and went and told my mom. She didn't believe me at first but then freaked out when she saw I was telling the truth. Dad ended up taking it across the road. Another time one was in a cabinet.

After I moved into a nearby small town when I was a teenager I would run up on copperheads on railroad tracks. I use to walk down them to get from my grandmother's house to the middle of town and they would be lying in leaves I think getting sun. They say the timber rattlesnake is state wide, but I've only seen them in middle and east Tennessee.
 
#206
#206
rwemyss said:
Completely off topic... but a guard at my site in Arkansas SWEARS he's seen a large black cat there. Except there's no evidence of cougars/mountain lions/panthers of North America EVER being black. He COULD have seen a cougar as they seem to be slowly making their way back up into Arkansas, but it certainly wouldn't have been black.

More likely a bobcat in dark shade so hard to tell, or actually just a big house cat.
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It could be an escaped big cat that some nut was keeping as a pet. That's where they say the mountain lions that people see here come from. I've never seen one personally. I have heard them in Chuckey though. That sounds is pretty distinct.
 
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#207
#207
JCHateSteve said:
In the Tri you basically live at the edge of the woods unless you're right in a city center. So we see copperheads occasionally. My grandparent's houses in Scott County saw them more.

Rattlesnakes are things that avid hikers and hunters talk about. They live here, but I hear as many stories about mountain lions, and they supposedly don't.
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The local game wardens will say they don't luve there, but talk to men who spend time in them mountains, and you'll hear a different story 🤣
 
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#209
#209
joevol33 said:
The local game wardens will say they don't luve there, but talk to men who spend time in them mountains, and you'll hear a different story 🤣
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Most game wardens/ biologists I've heard from don't dispute they come and go from the area. They say they are mostly young males newly run off from mom searching for new territory, they've been know to go thousands of miles. There is no evidence though of viable breeding populations. As for black mountain lions, in all the hundreds of years of documented history in the new world there has never been a black one verifiabley documented either alive or dead. According to geneticists they don't have that gene in their DNA at all. Bobcats and jaguars have melanistic genes and have been documented, but never an mountain lion.
 
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#213
#213
chatsworth_vol said:
Most game wardens/ biologists I've heard from don't dispute they come and go from the area. They say they are mostly young males newly run off from mom searching for new territory, they've been know to go thousands of miles. There is no evidence though of viable breeding populations. As for black mountain lions, in all the hundreds of years of documented history in the new world there has never been a black one verifiabley documented either alive or dead. According to geneticists they don't have that gene in their DNA at all. Bobcats and jaguars have melanistic genes and have been documented, but never an mountain lion.
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I was watching something on TV, can't remember exactly what it was, but it was about them. A guy in Virginia, maybe west Virginia, had called the DNR there reporting one. The guy came out and told the man they didn't exist in the eastern US. The man said okay, and he'd shoot it next time to show them. The game warden told him it was illegal, and the guy asked him how it was illegal to shoot something that didn't exist 🤣. I'm pretty sure I saw something where the jaguars were the only solid black cats, and they're in south America. Though one was recently spotted in New Mexico, and they were worried they're trying to migrate that way. I don't think it was black though, but it's odd for one to be that far north to me.
 
#214
#214
joevol33 said:
I was watching something on TV, can't remember exactly what it was, but it was about them. A guy in Virginia, maybe west Virginia, had called the DNR there reporting one. The guy came out and told the man they didn't exist in the eastern US. The man said okay, and he'd shoot it next time to show them. The game warden told him it was illegal, and the guy asked him how it was illegal to shoot something that didn't exist 🤣. I'm pretty sure I saw something where the jaguars were the only solid black cats, and they're in south America. Though one was recently spotted in New Mexico, and they were worried they're trying to migrate that way. I don't think it was black though, but it's odd for one to be that far north to me.
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There have been 2-3 possible jaguar seen in the sw US in the last 20-40ish years, all have been normal color. The vast vast majority of black color phase come from the deep jungles of Central/ South America. If I remember right, they're not know to be seen above extreme south Mexico. It seems to be an adaptation for the dappled lighting of deep jungles, and not present in the populations in the more arid/mountainous areas.
 
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#215
#215
joevol33 said:
I was watching something on TV, can't remember exactly what it was, but it was about them. A guy in Virginia, maybe west Virginia, had called the DNR there reporting one. The guy came out and told the man they didn't exist in the eastern US. The man said okay, and he'd shoot it next time to show them. The game warden told him it was illegal, and the guy asked him how it was illegal to shoot something that didn't exist 🤣.
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That is based 100% on the fact they are protected, period. Tan, black, white, hell even pink with purple polka dots, it would still be a cougar. It might be an absolute 1:1,000,000,000 freak of nature , but it would still be a protected species.
 
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#221
#221
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#224
#224
C-south said:
I say it’s a baby rat snake. It’ll turn more black as it gets bigger.
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I had one of these about a year ago and showed the pic to a herpatologist. They said it was actually a type of water snake. Those young ones are really hard to tell some times.
 
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