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wodentoad
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Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:04 am
Location: East Tennessee

Garden Snakes for a Phobic

Okay, so here it is, the problem that has been plaguing me for years about gardening, and the outside in general. I have a terrible phobia of snakes. :oops: It used to be worse, but it is triggered by snakes in the wild, you know that slithery movement that you catch out of the corner of your eye and then look and see a snake?

I am getting better at forcing my brain to recognize harmless snakes--I am really working hard on my phobia--but I do live in a place where there are harmful snakes, and seeing the movement out of the corner of my eye or finding a snake by surprise just makes things harder for me. :eek: I mean, I'm not the kind who will imagine snakes everywhere or take undue precautions to avoid them like setting my shed on fire. I know that snakes are helpful to keep out garden pests, I know that they have every right to be here, and most of all, they are really unavoidable when it comes to where we live. (Our rear neighbor's junk pile and "urban forest"--read blight--are a great place for rats, mosquitoes, and snakes to live, undisturbed by human intervention.)

Okay so long story short, I don't want to rid my yard of snakes permanently. I just want to find a way to send them away temporarily when I am going to be gardening. I have had a list of crazy ideas, such as banging on the sides of our planned raised garden with a mallet, or installing some sort of ground shaking device. :? While Necessity is the mother of Invention, Fear is the mother of Crazy Ideas That Probably Would Not Work. I would like to live in harmony with my natural native pest controllers, not in fear because of bad brain wiring.

Thank you.

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wodentoad
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Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:04 am
Location: East Tennessee

I was thinking ground vibrations, hence hitting the garden beds with the mallet. If there is a snake there they would feel that like a log falling. I know they only have tympanic membranes. So far I am lucky that I have seen no timbers, but there are ratters and king snakes beside the harmless black racers and garters and worm snakes.



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