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Originally Posted by racerboy

I spend most of my free time out looking for snakes. Up here in NJ/NY it’s mostly timber rattlesnakes, black rat snakes, copperheads, racers, milk snakes, etc. There are eastern king snakes down in south NJ (corn snakes as well, but in 49 yrs of searching, I’ve never seen one in NJ). The python problem in FL is legit, and of course it’s man-made. I forget what hurricane did it (maybe Hurricane Andrew?) but a python breeding facility was wiped out during that storm that literally set free hundreds of Burmese pythons. Since the Everglades are sub-tropical, it really was a ‘perfect storm’. I don’t disagree with the eradication efforts, but the likelihood of success is limited, especially across the entire Everglades system. I think they even pay a bounty , but the population is so big now, and dispersed to some very remote areas, that killing a couple hundred a year is not going to make a huge dent.

Here’s a shot from one of the hibernaculums I visit every spring. There were 14 timber rattlesnakes in this basking spot.




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My dad was terrified of snakes before he spent three days in a snake pit in Korea to keep from being captured by the Chinese; after that, all snakes were fair game. My Uncle Bill used to tell a story about Dad seeing a snake adjacent to his feet, jumping straight up in the air and firing the rifle he was holding, killing the snake with one shot. Me? I don’t like venomous snakes, but will go out of my way to protect non-venomous snakes. Twice I have had to tell people working for us to not kill non-venomous snakes they might find on our property.