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We know they are snakes. They appear to be baby snakes. We hope they are adult snakes or worse the mama is close by. They have the ability to bite and we don't know what type snake it is. Clearly not a green snake or harmless black snake. We don't want snakes, baby or mama, around children and other adults.
Most snakes are harmless to humans.
More importantly, they are very beneficial to the eco system keeping all sorts of disease carrying rodents and insect populations down.
Also, unlike mama bear not being too far away from baby bears (i.e. you are in mortal danger), snakes lay eggs in most cases, and are then gone.
Even if a larger snake were around, they flee and would only attempt to bite in self defense.
Lastly if you feel you must kill them since you don't know what they are, how about taking a few pictures and posting them.
Or take one of the dead ones you killed to a local pet shop that sells them.
Then once you find out they pose no problem, you can stop killing them.
Over the years we have killed maybe 10 of them. Most were found around a tarp that was covering wood.
We always wondered if such a small snake could be an adult.
If not where is the mama snake? Nothing close by but a 10 foot over grown area between the back of two yards.
Where do you live? We get a lot of, what I thought were snakes in our back garden, usually under the compost or wood burner at what I call the 'wild' end of the garden (beyond the range of the mower power cord!) but it turns out they're slow worms (legless lizards) but I'm in the UK so it might be totally different where you are.
Don't like snakes, they like to spend time near my outdoor shower. I don't kill them but they don't like being sprayed with bleach. They go. Neighbor had a copperhead crawl under his splash block.
Where do you live? We get a lot of, what I thought were snakes in our back garden, usually under the compost or wood burner at what I call the 'wild' end of the garden (beyond the range of the mower power cord!) but it turns out they're slow worms (legless lizards) but I'm in the UK so it might be totally different where you are.
The bulge at the bottom of the pic is a rat that this guy had just swallowed before I shooed him off my porch. I'm happy to have all the snakes that seem to enjoy my little piece of Earth.
1) Nice corn snake picture in the post before this.
2) OP
-there are some very small snakes out there that are not "babies". One is ringneck which are about the size of a large earthworm and tend to have one colored band around their neck like they have a dog collar on.
-Your cited reasoning for killing them is safety. Some of those harmless snake species actually eat venomous snakes so you may in fact be making your yard LESS safe from dangerous snakes by killing these.
-A picture or description plus your general location (like state) would be very useful. You could google "snakes of Idaho" for example if you live in Idaho and look through the pictures.
Snakes are good for your garden and you shouldn't be killing them. Where are you located? Venomous snakes in a U.S. garden in many parts of the country is very unlikely. The most common small garden snake is the garter snake, which you should actually be happy to have around.
We don't have a garden and the common poisonous in our area is the copperhead. Close to water maybe cottonmouth or water moccasin. We had a friend bitten and in her effort to back away fell and broke her leg. Type of snake we don't know. Relative found a black snake in the bath tub a couple years ago and another type of snake (unknown) came down the chimney last year.
I also forgot the beautiful but deadly coral snake seen in pine trees, etc.
"The beautiful, highly venomous coral snake takes its name from its bright colors, reminiscent of those found in some species of coral. It is North Carolina’s only member of the cobra family and our only snake with strictly neurotoxic venom" from ncwildlife.org.
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