North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

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On Feb 5, 2004, at 2:36 AM, Rick Valley wrote:

> > Any opinions regarding snakes?  How about providing suitable
> > overwintering structures?  I think Corn snakes, Rat snakes and Blue
> > Racers are pretty cool.  I'll take a pass on pit vipers, though.
>
> It's pretty tacky looking, but snakes love black plastic. The only 
> thing
> better is black plastic over a compost heap.
> For overwintering? Dry stone walls, and trenches filled with woody 
> debris.
> Here in W. Oregon the top two snakes to have would be gopher snakes and
> rubber boas; the garter snakes and little sharp-tailed snakes eat 
> slugs, so
> they're good garden snakes.
>
> -Rick

Alas, my cat likes to kill snakes.  Any suggestions to help out the 
snakes?  She also kills a lot of chipmunks, and scares the birds away 
from my berries, so I'd like to let her keep roaming the garden.

Ginda