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Snake ID (Jason)

3K views 12 replies 12 participants last post by  MrFish 
#1 ·
Found this guy swimming in the pool. Bright orange, black and white.
 

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#7 ·
Brother, fer some reason my internet in the mountains sucks on the PFF page (takes 5 min to load every page) but other sites are fine.... could have just texted me. Looks like a king but cant clearly see the color pattern got 100% certainty...
 
#8 ·
Great find.

I've been in the woods all my life and I saw my first Scarlet King Snake a few weeks ago right in front of the Crystal River Mall. By the time I got back to him, somebody ran over him. So I guess I have never really seen a live one.

I've seen very few King Snakes in this area. I've seen more Mole Snakes (In the King Snake Genus) than any other. Mole Snakes are really rare elsewhere in their range. For old memories, my mind is a steel trap. When I was in college, taking a Field Zoology course, the snake that was worth more to our grade was a Mole Snake. I never caught one back then but still made an A in the course. I still remember the scientific name for the Mole Snak.,
Lampropeltis caligaster rhombomaculatum. Maybe Caligaster has 2 "Ls." Down here they are easy to catch after a big rain.

I see way too many big Yellow Rat Snakes here. Usually in my hen house.
 
#10 ·
Recently had a snake expert tell me that a coral snakes nose will be black. He also said that most snakes that have a body like a broom stick are normally safe but any large body snakes are normally poisonous. By large body he said the body is thicker than the head.
 
#12 ·
The problem with that is I can think of a bunch of exceptions to that rule. Water snakes have broader bodies. Coral snakes and pygmy rattlers are pretty skinny too. Even the "red touch black, friend of jack, red touch yellow kill a fellow" rhyme only works in the southeast US. Other generalizations like head shape and pupils are often wrong too. You just need to know how to recognize 3 species of snakes and remember the rhyme. If you can identify snapper or grouper, there's no reason why you can't learn what venomous snakes look like.

Look for Hershey kisses patterns on copperheads
The mean looking black eye mask on cottonmouths
The unique spot pattern on pygmy rattlers
Corals and timbers and diamondbacks are pretty obvious. Anything else is harmless, and every snake is harmless if you stay 4 feet away from it. Give them their space, let them eat up the mice and rats and move on.
 
#13 ·
If it's belly didn't have the stripes and the stripes were white and not yellow, then it's a scarlet snake. If they were yellow and go around the body, then it's a scarlet king.

A coral snake will always have a black nose, while a scarlet and a scarlet king will have red noses.

There are no poisonous snakes.
 
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