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Boomslang
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Posts: 75
Joined: Tue May 24, 2011 7:29 pm
Location: Alabama

Garden Ponds and snakes..........

Years ago, I bought my wife a 250 gallon water pond set up. I got a bunch of creek rock and built a really nice waterfall. It looked great. We put some gold fish in it to control the mosquitoes and other insects. I in the deep south so the summers tend to get quite dry. It wasn't long before I noticed bullfrogs had also made a home in my pond. Then, not long after that, I would walk out to catch a glimpse of a few water snakes that had also took up residence. They would hide and lay among the creek rock. I'm guessing they were attracted to the water source and the fish and frogs which is their main diet. They are harmless, yet most people mistake them for the Copperhead or Cottonmouth. These two are really bad news if you happen to get bit by them. I personally enjoyed the little water snakes, but my wife had a fit. She didn't like them around plus they were eating all her fish. I finally, caught the snakes (2 of them) and relocated them a few miles down the road in a creek.
A few weeks later, I noticed a rat snake laying on the rocks. I figured he probably came up to get a drink. I got him and carried him at the edge of the yard and let him go in the weeds.
Unless you have your water garden in a fenced in area, keep in mind that it will probably be a water source for various critters, especially if you tend to have long dry summers.

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Kisal
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Joined: Tue Jun 24, 2008 1:04 am
Location: Oregon

I appreciate the work snakes do in controlling rodents. They're welcome in my world. :)

TheRipeTomato
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Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2012 1:22 am

Kisal wrote:I appreciate the work snakes do in controlling rodents. They're welcome in my world. :)
Amen to that. Snakes do way more good than harm 99.99% of the time.

janecarter
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Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Mar 07, 2016 7:27 am

True. I also was searching for informations and found that : "One rodent-eating snake can nearly decimate a rat family in weeks, and several small snakes can do severe damage to a grasshopper population in a confined area in just one summer."

YoungGardener94
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Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2017 4:57 pm
Location: UK

Thankfully in the UK snakes are not common here. I don't know how you guys do it over there! If I saw one I would hallucinate lol. However rats are a large problem here though.

thanrose
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Posts: 716
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 10:01 am
Location: Jacksonville, FLZone 9A

Yeah, but you have those vicious little hedgehogs! Just kidding.

You get used to snakes, even the dangerous ones. It's the alligators that are a nuisance. And really, they aren't so bad as long as you remain aware of them and avoid them as much as possible.

Little ponds or bog gardens have the potential for all kinds of things to go wrong. Herons eat your koi, turtles bite the feet off your ducklings, leeches attach to your dangling legs. But they give a lot of enjoyment if you can manage the upkeep.



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