What interesting creatures live in your garden?

[Carol Dee]

@Carol Dee I have never seen one in the wild. Have tons of red tail hawks. Only once a owl.

City dwelling maybe? I have seen MANY eagles, all types of hawks and owls. Common here. Especially if you get out into the farmlands.

 

[sumi]

Yesterday evening's visitor:

We haven't identified it yet. I was too shaken last night. DH found it right next to the chick pen. I am so grateful he did, before the snake found my chicks! We drove some distance from the farm and town to release it in the veld.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Over here, our only venomous snakes are pit vipers with their wide triangular heads and thick lumpy bodies; copperheads, water moccasins, and rattlesnakes. Pretty easy to identify. Plus the coral snake, but that is rare, very distinctly marked, and restricted to a limited range. Red touches yellow, dangerous fellow. Red touches black, he's OK Jack. Any snakes that is not marked with bright red, yellow, and black bands and has a thin pencil-like head is not venomous.

Did you have any assurances that was not a venomous snake?

 

[Carol Dee]

I had the same thoughts as @Ridgerunner. It did not look venomous to me! We live north of Ridge and have the same snakes it seems.

 

[sumi]

We have a good mix of snakes here, ranging from deadly to completely harmless. There are pics here (warning some graphic images too) Images for venomous snakes south africa I am going to ask a snake catcher friend of ours to identify the one we caught last night. Since we don't know many of the snakes we treat them all with caution

 

[Carol Dee]

@sumi Many beautiful snakes. Most would look harmless in the U.S.A. not so there it seems. YES proceed with caution around any snakes there!

 

[sumi]

Our tenant thought last night's catch was a night adder (Images for adder) but it wasn't, thankfully. My biggest worry is cobras (Images for cobra south africa) and Black mamba - Wikipedia. When I was a child we lived up North, not far from the SA-Botswana border and I remember us finding one in our backyard one evening. That was the only time I've seen my father killing a snake.

 

[journey11]

That snake looks pink! My DD7 will get a kick out of that. She wants a corn snake for her birthday. They come in 70-some different colors and patterns. I hope you're isn't venomous. The head doesn't look like it anyway. I can't imagine having to keep an eye out for Black Mambas. We only have two venomous snakes in our region and their habits are very predictable. I've heard people swear they've seen cottonmouths here, but the DNR says we don't have them.

 

[goatgurl]

@journey11 our DNR says there are no mountain lions in Arkansas but I've seen them with my own eyes sooo if it looks like a cottonmouth I'd give it wide berth. @sumi i sure hope you find out what kind of snake it is. agree with @Ridgerunner, our poison snakes normally have a wide jaw giving their head a triangle look. and for the coral snake my dad use to say "red on black, don't break it's back. red on yellow will kill a fellow'. different version of the same saying

 

[sumi]

We're not supposed to have certain snakes in certain parts of the country, for example, we weren't supposed to have black mambas in the Eastern cape, down by the coast. DH spoke to someone who killed one while we were there. People are irresponsible and moving snakes around the country, keeping them as "pets" and then releasing them into the wild, having them escape.

Here we can't really go with head shapes, look at this one for example: Images for boomslang They come in a variety of looks and colouring and they are ALL dangerous. The big, big problem with the boomslang is, to an untrained eye, some of them look very similar to other harmless snake species...