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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Rattlesnake encounter
  • Date: Sun, 2 Jul 2006 17:10:58 EDT


> Need to get cats to
> keep down the mice.
>

Cats will keep down the snakes too. Some say the goddess Bast got her
origin because in the swampy delta region the people were plagued with snakes
until they started keeping domestic cats .... so Bast is seen as doing battle
with
Apep, the snake king.

We've had cats swell up like a toad frog from copperhead bites and recover.
Most of the time the cat just shows up with a dead snake sometimes several
times longer than the cat. (the specie of copperhead native to the mountains
here is much smaller than the more southern copperhead).

Alas the cat's aren't discriminating when it comes to snake hunting, a lot of
small indigo, garter, grass - snakes get eaten. They don't bother the
several very large species of blacksnakes we have, and those are another
thing that
keeps down the vipers. In the years that we see a lot of black racers and
other blacksnakes, we see very few copperheads. In years there are few
blacksnakes, the copperheads are as numerous as earthworms.

Very large timber rattlers are native here, but i've never seen one. There's
a picture of a record large timber rattler that was killed in my front
pasture when it was a holding yard for logs many years ago, but I've never
seen one
here.

Everyone here points to the harmless grey watersnake and yells "Cottonmouth!"
but there are no cottonmouths here.

I had my least problem with the troublesome mice and voles the year I saw
more than 30 copperheads in the garden (not all at once, thank Bast!). Don't
know that I reckon it a good trade.




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