![]() ![]() I do NOT like to walk around in my backyard and I'm very wary walking down my driveway in the morning when it's dark out (I've had several big black snakes on my driveway). ![]() I'm not "afraid" of them nor do I think they are "gross" but they just skeeve me out in such a way that it has altered my behavior. ![]() Now, if you move to NOVA, your house will probably get camel/spider crickets. ![]() Snakes just want to be left alone, I can't understand why people fear them or think they are gross. I've seen a few green tree snakes which are very gentle and a few black water snakes which can get quite large. Nothing like that down here though, I've seen one copperhead in 20 years. There is a small lake in Bethel, Connecticut teeming with water moccasins (cottonmouths), big, thick, healthy ones too! I learned, too, that with different medicines there wasn't much difference in design between an aspirin bottle, say, and a poison bottle. The frightening thing about the poison was that even though some kept it in the barn, or other out building, some folks kept it in their medicine cabinet, and since electric lighting in the house was at most times sparse, or sometimes didn't exist, and they had to rely on kerosene lanterns, the poison bottles had a distinguishing mark on the bottle that a person could identify as deadly, simply by feel, or poor lighting, if need be. I would rather keep with my weed-eater, and mower. The poison had a dual purpose in discouraging any rodents or snakes, since the bare ground became no-man's land for the critters, and, since power equipment wasn't that widely available back then, no one had to worry about mowing or weed-eating the yard. radius, was kept clean of any vegetation by spraying with the poison. I was told that the area around the house, sometimes out in a 10, or 12 ft. I also collected old bottles as a hobby, for awhile, and was fascinated to find out that the small, cobalt blue, poison bottles I found contained either arsenic, or strychnine, bought at the local drugstore that folks back in the days used for keeping rats and snakes out of the house. I even kept a chunk on my tractor that I ran, and when I would have to walk through high weeds to get to a fence, or work on equipment, I would rub some across the top of my work boots to keep the crawlys off of me. So, at the time, I was working in an area by a train track, and there was a big pile of sulfur, that I was told was the remains of from when a train car overturned years ago.I took some home, pulverized it, sprinkled it around the house, and it worked pretty good for me. The old-timers told me to sprinkle some around where I wanted to keep them away, and it would repel them. I was curious what was in the powder, and after reading the label, and talking to old-timers that lived around me, I discovered that a fairly effective repelent for snakes, and even chiggers, ticks, and the such was sulfur powder. The seat was history, and the area underneath had to be repeatedly scrubbed with disenfectant by the poor guy in mask and gloves. I know of one such incident that I saw, personally, that happened on a bull dozer, and when we came back after a long holiday, you could hardly get within 10 feet of the dozer without gagging. In another instance, the snake would wedge itself under the seat so that when the operator sat down, it would injure the snake, and then it would die in the course of a day, or two. It happened to me only once, then I learned to look under my seat every morning. I have seen men turn the machinery off, then jump off before it quits moving, and run away from their equipment, shaking in their boots after that happening to them. It was a rude awakening to be sometimes an hour into driving your machine, then looking down, and seeing a big, black, mocassin entertwined around your foot, or a copperhead slithering across your boot. It worked good, because we had trouble, especially in the cooler months, with the snakes crawling up the machinery to get under our seats to warm themselves from the residule heat from the motor. Working for the County in Texas, we had a powder called, if memeory serves me, " Snake Away" that the equipment operators could sprinkle around their machines after they shut down to go home. ![]()
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