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.
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.