The Black Snake

If you read my column last week, you know Gene and I dubbed 2006 “The Year of the Great Snake Infestation.” And if you thought that story ended with the death of the copperhead under our cross tie steps and a rainstorm that night, well, you’d be wrong.

Gene and I were relieved that the copperhead was dead, even though we were sad we had to kill her. That same day, after I got home from work, and a little while before it started raining, Gene and I walked into the backyard together, scanning every flowerbed for other venomous snakes. But we found none. All we found that day was peace and quiet.

Again, if you read last week, you’ll remember that we smelled an awful smell while the copperhead was dying. Turns out snakes release a powerful musk when dying from glands near the tail. Folks describe it as skunk-like. That smell was still thick in the air as Gene and I stood on the lowest cross tie step in the backyard that day after work.

We live in the middle of the woods in Northwest Georgia. For a moment, it was dead quiet. Then we heard leaves rustling—not close, but getting closer. Both of us started scanning the surrounding woods and the tree line. About forty feet away, a black snake came shooting out of the underbrush, making a beeline straight for us.

“Do you see what I see?” I asked. Gene didn’t answer. He grabbed one of the snake-handling tools my maintenance friend had made for me—a hook mounted on an eight-foot pipe. Within a minute, he scooped that snake right up like a superhero.

“I’m pretty sure that’s a black racer,” I said, as Gene walked away with it dangling. I’d gotten pretty good at snake identification that year, thanks to a pocket field guide I kept on the kitchen table. The black racer is nonvenomous, solid black with a little white under its chin, fast as all getout, and somewhat skittish around humans.

But nobody told that snake he was supposed to be afraid of us, and so, he wasn’t.

Gene carried him to the tree line and tossed him back into the leaves. The rustling started again almost immediately— that snake was headed right back to us like a boomerang. Gene moved him farther into the woods the second time. Same result. That black racer followed Gene’s tracks straight back to us like he had a GPS pinned on our location. Again and again Gene moved him. Again and again, back he came, determined as all get-out. It was the stuff of nightmares!

Finally, Gene threw the hook down, looked at me, and yelled, “Run!” He and I darted up the steps to the safety of the deck. Gene said, “I’m done with that snake,” and he went inside for the night.

But I stayed outside and watched. That black racer moved frantically around the exact spot where the copperhead had died, searching for something. I’m no herpetologist or wildlife expert, but I have two theories. Either that copperhead’s dying smell convinced him she was an easy meal—black racers do eat other snakes sometimes—or another black racer hiding under those cross ties was releasing mating pheromones that very same day, sending our visitor into a slithering love-crazed frenzy. We’ll never know.

In the month that followed, we carefully removed every cross tie and landscaping timber from the backyard. Most went into a burn pile. The rest we hauled deep into the woods. The next spring, we built steps from rock and fieldstone—solid, sturdy, beautiful, and with no possibility of rotting and creating a habitat for bugs, rodents, and snakes. And the great snake infestation was officially over.

We still see a snake from time to time out there—nothing unusual for living in the woods. But it is nothing like what happened to us in 2006. That was a year like no other, and now you’ve read the rest of the story.