I just spent an hour down on the ground bent over a 5-foot California King Snake, using two kinds of scissors to cut him loose from bird netting. It was my fault, and I felt awful!

I've been very careful to make sure the animals don't get caught in the netting, but I put a spare piece in the top of a scrub brush at the edge of my orchard where I've been planting bareroot fruit trees to protect them from the deer. Somehow it must have slid down to the ground level where he slithered his way into it. He was at least 2 1/2 inches thick in his midsection, and had gotten his body through eight 1/2" holes of the netting! He was squished and bent and trapped by the grass that had grown through the netting, holding it, and him, to the ground.

His head and neck were also through several holes, which turned out to help me control him in the end. He must have been there at least a week, probably two, looking at the way the grass underneath him had not grown.

I step over snakes all the time, (no rattlers) I shoo them off the driveway so they won't be lunch for the hawks, but I've never handled one, or had to really deal with one so intimately.

They are crucially important to helping with the gopher and mice control, so I am always careful of them. It took me about 10 minutes to realize cutting tightly bound plastic around him was not going to be easy. I didn't want to cut him with the scissors, but finally I thought
that a few nips were better than dying of starvation or having him escape with some of the stuff still on him, and his not being able to get food through.

I covered his head with a couple layers of shade cloth, and told him not to look (I know, I know, he can't hear me, but anxiety won out. You wouldn't believe what I told that snake!) and slowly but surely clipped his body free, which gave him the strength to swirl his body around and try to leave, but when I lifted up on the netting around his neck, he calmed down. He was actually very calm and polite through most of it, only hissed at me once.

When I finally got most of it undone, he backed his head out of the rest of it, and slowly and peacefully went off in the opposite direction. His body looked normal after all, and I guess his scales protected him from the scissors, or at least that's what I told myself. Otherwise we'd probably both still be sitting there, me wringing my hands, apologizing for poking him!

What a relief for me, and I hope for him!! I hate bird netting, it drives me crazy, but it does work well, which I guess makes it a necessary evil. I certainly will store it more carefully after this!

Wow, what a great story. Don't beat yourself up--everything we do has an impact, and we all make mistakes that hurt others from time to time. You worked hard to rectify your mistake, and you can be at peace about it now.

I love to read stories about close encounters. I'm so glad you were able to get him loose without too much trauma.

Blessings,

Heather

No matter how organic we are, no matter how many times we pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves how much better we are for the environment, we still have a heck of an impact. I wonder how many mantises and ladybugs are killed by insecticidial soap and dormant oil. Did you know that greensand can only be found in one small part of NJ, and that is being mined clean, we are destroying a natural resource because we want better gardening results. How many of us rake up all our grass clippings and fallen leaves to make compost, and then only use it on the garden, thereby denying the lawn much-needed organic matter.

In the long run what you did wasn't too bad, your captive lived, snakes can go weeks, in some cases months, without food or water. So don't feel too bad.

sweetpea, that's an incredible story. what an introduction to snake handling. Did your hands stink bad after holding him still and such? Once we had a black snake caught in the rafters of our outhouse, which was the only place for such business at the time. My two boys and I would never be able to relax enough to get anything done with a big snake over our heads, so it had to go. DH managed to get hold of it and drag it out and toss it into the woods and his hands smelled just awful afterwards.

What a great story.I'm so happy it worked out well for both of you.I,like many others don't really like snakes.(comes from coming from Ireland)but I respect them and give them the space they need.My sister has snakes in her garden and it frightens her so bad that she won't work in the garden.I set it up with lots of Hostas and other stuff that doesn't need a lot of care so she can have a nice garden anyway.I'd bee happy to get a snake in my yard to deal with slugs.I'm hoping to get some frogs in there so maybe the snakes will follow.
Mavis

Thanks for the kind words, guys. And, yes, Locke, because we are on the planet we'll do some damage, but hopefully we'll do more good than harm. The first time I put out beer for the snails, all my good bugs jumped in, too, so I stopped doing that.

But it is a big reminder to me that it's not "my" garden, and it shouldn't be only mine. I share it with all the creatures who live there. It's important to know who they all are and how they live their lives, and that we all have to be out there together....well, except for the gophers!!!

Trudy, he didn't have a smell to him. But you said that snake was in your outhouse? That means the mice were there, too, and they are perfectly willing to go Everywhere, if you know what I mean, so maybe that's what he had on him.

We had the same situation with a large black racer snake. He lived, we lived, and I'm not using netting. Also had a black snake caught in the drain hole of a plastic pot..must have been hunting a lizard....now that was real comical as the plastic was harder to cut than the netting....took a long time, but he was finally freed.

Trudy, Sweetpea, I know all about that smell.

I LOVE snakes and used to catch them all the time as a kid, as well as insects, rodents, lizards and anything else that crossed my path. (Had a pet tarantula once that I named after my Godmother...don't think she took it as flattering somehow...)

Anyhow, some snakes I caught would smell bad while others didn't. I discovered that a garter snake I was handling one day was exuding a pale greasy substance from you know where--and it STUNK! Basically, I think a frightened snake will sometimes poop on whatever is bothering it to make itself smell completely unpalateable--would you eat something that smelled that bad?!

BTW--the mice and other rodents I handled never had a noticeable odor to them, even when caught in a barn where the horse dung is full of undigested seeds--and the ones I kept from time to time would groom as often as a cat. I would think that a strong smell would catch the attention of predators.

I've found birds entangled in bird netting before, but never a snake. The poor sparrow I found managed to twist its way free after I got my hand under it, to support it.

I don't like bird netting... but I may change my mind when my cherry tree starts producing in a few years.

I wonder if the wildlife out there curse us or bless us for our methods. "D!@#$ fricken #$%@#$ netting... Oh well, at least they didn't take a shovel to my head..."

Interesting that the snakes use smell as a defense. We only have a couple kinds of snakes around here, and they don't do anything fancy. I guess I'm kind of glad.