Yah:
Possums and skunks are good to have around, although the second one may provide free perfume.
Clean up grubs and too many earthworms which are actually non-native.

Opposite:
Groundhogs will raze an entire garden in a day.
Raccoons will eat all the local migrating bird nests, kill your cat if they can, and generally called trash panda for a reason.

I get a lot of armadillos. (Possum on the half shell) They will destroy a yard overnight.

If you have enough grubs to attract skunks and possums, put down some insecticide granules and kill the grubs. Skunks & possums can tear up a yard digging up grubs. And I would prefer to keep them out of my yard and in the country.

This place has become critter central! In addition to the snake in the house, this morning we saw a tom turkey strutting down the middle of our driveway. We see majestic, but a little goofy actin Pileated Woodpeckers on our feeders daily. Yesterday I found a big milk snake in the chicken barn. This afternoon my killer dog Madison dug up her 3rd mole of the week, and this afternoon I found this guy sneaking into my under-house garage - probably headed to the house. He may not have enjoyed the flight into the bushes at the bottom of the ravine, but I'm sure he survived it.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1558069767.jpg

We called the local snakeinator last week, who showed up today. He says we don't have a snake problem in our ceiling, we have a rodent problem. As long as mice are pumping out baby mice (taste like chicken) the snakes are going to be up there. Our course of action is to remove the snakes, catching them with mouse flavored glue traps (unfortunately they have to be euthanized - I did not know that, but I feel much better about euthanizing the one we found on our floor). Step 2 is to trap rodents, then set up poison stations to limit further populations, then seal the house so it's not as easy for the furry little bastages to get back into the house. He set 4 snake glue traps to see what he could find
The he started telling stories about the six foot long black rat snake he took out of an attic a few houses down, and the time he could only get a copper bellied water snake out of a client's koi pond by reaching in under a ledge and annoying it until it bit him (barehanded) they have fishhook teeth and as long as you keep pulling they can't get away. Interesting, but TMI for me. I'm not likely to ever catch a snake by letting him bite me.

snake/python pooh is supposed to scare away mice. I saw it for sale a while back.



https://www.amazingamazon.com.au/med...ython_poop.jpg

https://www.amazingamazon.com.au/snake-poop-python-poo-for-sale.html

My pooh seems to work just fine in the middle of the room...haven't seen any mice :)!

One of our family friends retired, and finally moved back to the farm where he grew up. He had inherited it from his parents and loved the place. So the spent some money and hired a crew to modernize the place, and make it nicer. His first morning of retirement he got up at dawn to watch the sunrise from his porch. He grabbed a big cup of coffee and went to the rocker to enjoy the view. There on the porch was a rattlesnake. So he fetched his .38 with snake shot, and killed it. Ahhh, relaxing view. The next morning he made a pot of coffee and headed to the porch. Dang it, another rattlesnake. Blam, problem solved. This is all in rural Texas, so no problem shooting snakes.

Third morning, he makes the coffee, brings the .38 and sure enough another dang rattlesnake. One per day for three days in a row. So he called a local rattlesnake hunter to come check out his place. The guy went under the house for a few seconds and backed right out. He said it was a sea of rattlesnakes. The ended up with over 40 rattlesnakes that were captured. He said he had noticed there were no signs of mice or any rodents anywhere in the area. Within a few months he had a rodent problem. He bought some rat snakes, and let them go in the barn. He was happy to find a king snake in the area not long after. No rattlesnakes since. On occasion they have to take a snake outside, but it is a good snake.

I caught this one in my house about a year and a half ago. It was probably between 2 and 3 feet long. It is black....but the light on it (flash) makes it look gray (It was in the dark). Hard to catch and keep from escaping as these type can almost stand up on the end of their tail (helps catch birds on bushes). This one could instantly raise itself up and come out of a 3 foot tall box (with trash can liner (in photo). That is why they are likely types to get into a house. They can get in anywhere a mouse can...and actually seem to follow their trail.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1558105889.JPG

I recently saw a much bigger one near (between 4 and 5 feet long) where I released it...so maybe the same one. Only about half of this one is in the photo:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1558106555.jpg

I saw one in the landscaping near my front door last year that was well over 6 feet long and as big around as my wimpy bicep. Last time that year I reached under that bush and blindly pulled weeds. I was only able to photo the tail end as it quickly exited...probably the last foot of it and the smallest part (but you can see it was pretty large).
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1558106555.jpg

They say they eat about once a week...so a big rat snake probably consumes a lot of rodents. The numbers here sure drop in the summer.

I’m not a snake expert, but that resembles a rattlesnake to my eye. I would’ve relocated that thing a lot further away than the nearest ravine.

Looks like a bull snake. Non-venomous, but IDK if I'd have gotten close enough to distinguish between the two.

That sure looks like the head of a viper to me...

https://eastcountytoday.net/wp-conte...ttlesnakes.jpg

I stand by my original Google results of Bull Snake.

Either an Eastern Milksnake or possibly an Eastern Hognose (big head)...could tell for sure if you could see head a little better. At first I eliminated the Hognose because the "hognose would probably be more obvious...but they do seem to have this overall larger, V-shape shaped head (and it is hard to discern if it has the "hognose" from the photo...for me).

I don't think they have Bull Snakes in Ohio.

Who knows, could be the most gentle snake in the world.

Still don’t want it in my yard.

Be forewarned...I had a bat land on my neck in the day light while rafting on the Salmon river, Idaho....no scratches or marks on me. I told my brother in law physician about it. Next thing I know I had to get rabies shots. You can’t take chances. If you get any signs of rabies it’s too late.

Why did the snake cross the road? I will never know. This one turned around and headed back into the woods.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1558121549.jpg

I so vividly remember walking around long ago and a friend that was afraid of snakes pointed at a little Garter snake and exclaimed, Look, a copperheadded-rattle-moccasin with a coral tip! One of them mean crossbreeds. I laughed for an hour at his terror.

Black tailed rattle snake in the road at Big Bend National Park.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1558126761.jpg

It's a milk snake. Confirmed by the snakenator who came to clear the house out. No snakes in the traps after 24 hours.
We only have one kind of rattlesnake in this part of Ohio - the Massasauga. This guy was too skinny, wrong color, and no rattle.

I had a startling snake encounter today. I was up on the roof of my airstream motorhome doing some cleaning and servicing the AC unit.
The curved roof is not an easy place to be. You have to stay on the areas with ribs under the aluminum skin.
This makes for being in awkward positions while working up there.
So while streched out with scrub bush in hand I noticed movement by my other hand that was helping me to ballence over the beam as I worked.

The movement turned out to be a small snake about 6 inches from my hand. It looked somewhat like a pigmy rattlesnake. It had the triangular shaped head and the right coloration, But had no rattles and was not being aggressive towards me.
Not being in a position to scamper out of the way. So I used the scrub brush to flick it off the roof.
This got it well away from me so I could continue with the task at hand, once my heart settled down. Quite surprising finding it up there but not totally, as I am parked right close to the lower branches of our largest live oak tree. Before climbing down I trimmed the lower branches hanging down touching the roof.http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1558388767.jpg