Oh man, speaking of yellow jackets, we were out in our woods and there is this huge paper hornets nest up in a tree and it is just barely up there on a leafstem! I hope that thing does not come crashing down on us when we are hiking under that tree. I have not seen my photo of it come up yet so hopefully later I will have a pic of it!
I am however hoping the thing will come down and I can preserve it. It is gorgeous. But highly deadly if one was to get multiple stings from its occupants and if they were allergic. Fall is snake, bat and bee/hornet time no doubt about that.
I read up a little on copperheads...it appears that it is one of the few venoumous snakes that can actually bite but does not necessarily inject its poison on the first bite. It may just bite for a warning and then get all sorts of pissed off. I dont know about timber rattlers, I think they may be the same way in that respect.. I use the run like H*** method if escape to not get bite if possible.
This one here startled off one way and I RAN the other! Or should I say, ran and hopped to higher ground! Next day I found him dead in the pathway going the other way. Weird, but I think I also may have ran him over with the mower in the panic process of getting trying to get clear of him and he was trying to escape me as I was not about to get bite by him in my sandle feet if it was venomous. It happened so fast.
Ok, going to google Prairie King snake..
I stay away from all snakes if I can help it. I treat them if they were all poisonous.. keep my distance and dont chance it since I am not that knowledgeable of them. Dont pick them up bare handed or any other way since I also do not know how to handle them and really dont care to.
A few years back we came across a boa constrictor in our prairie. Some lunatic released him in the wild. Must have thought the bog was a good place for him. Unfortuneately he met his maker with an 8 foot mower deck and what we found of him was that long and then some and as big around as my hubs arm. It was a yellow spotted thing. Dumb idiot who did let him go, well that particulare snake if the mower did not get him the harsh winter would have as it was a tropical dweller.
I swear while I admittedly do not like snakes, I dislike the idiot who released him to the wild even more in the stupidity of putting a tropical snake to a habitat not to its nature. No less in a protected habitat where rare species can be affected by the disturbance of nature even if it was only gonna be temporary. Takes all kinds and people do stupid.
Unfortuneately for the snake population here, more snakes go through the mower than I probably am aware of. I usualy find them in peices after cutting grass for hay. I have had the unpleasant experiences of them to fall out of a tree when mowing too...had one bounce right on my hand.
Snakes love hiding under rocks and creavasses and in pots and planters. They go where the rodents and frogs go. The other day I was weeding by hand and came to a part in my daylily bed where I pulled a weed and right by the weed was a hole in the ground to which out hopped a frog and a snake of some description was in hot persuit of that poor frog. I think it was a lil brown snake. and that frog surely was too big for its eyes for a meal, but he was hell bent on eating it.
