When you live in a rural area, sometimes small creatures come into the house.
And the other night, there was a small snake in one of the light fixtures.
It looked a lot like this one:
It was about 7 or 8 inches long and about twice the diameter of a pencil.
I know what it was. I easily picked up and released it outside. Can you identify the species?
The answer is here.
A little milk snake.
Unless one is a firefighter, cop, or other manly man at a wilderness lost person search or hurricane aftermath.
In which case, it is a deadly fireman-eating copperhead that must induce schoolgirl panic and frantic murder attempts.
Looks like a baby corn or rat snake.
Here in Northern California, the deadly firman eater’s are gopher snakes. They even mimic rattlers by buzzing their tails against dry bushes or grass. Jay rescued one that had the attention of three firemen and a truck with flashing lights on a few seconds before it was to be hacked to bits and ended up giving an impromptu snake ID clinic to Moraga California’s finest
Milk snake. Your variety is marked and colored a little differently than mine, which is typical of milk snakes. Wonderful colubrids, Lampropeltis triangulum! I always have at least one hibernate under my wood pile and I depend on them to help keep the deer mice under control.
Looks like a black rat snake, elaphe obsoleta. They lose most of those marking as adults.
Milk snakes are banded red, black and white. They mimic coral snakes. Red against yellow, kill a fellow, red against black, venom lack.
We have the Trans Pecos rat snakes here, with the big eyes. Very pretty.