I have a couple resident ones in our gardens. I just let them be.They just freak my wife out when she is weeding.

Rat snake -- I worked with a reptile rehabilitation group the whole time I was in high school so I've had a lot of practice handling all different types of snakes.

Deer get the bad press for ticks, but it's mainly mice and other rodents that carry the diseases that are then transmitted to humans through ticks, as well as for the majority of ticks that are in close proximity to people.

http://lymediseasecentralmass.com/the-ro...-only-villains/

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/kiling-deer-not-answer-reducing-lyme-disease-html/

We took him out of the bush before he could raid the bird nests that were in it (my wife loves feeding the birds so we have nests in virtually every bush on the property.) I took him down to the river and let him go in a big brush pile along the bank after making sure the neighbors wouldn't kill him if he happened to show up on their property. My daughter petting it was pretty convincing that he wasn't a threat to them.

This was the biggest wild snake I've ever caught - it was between 5 and 6 feet long judging from this photo of me holding him (the bush I found him in is in the background along with the gate I was closing when I turned around to face him):

dad of the year. well done my man!

love snakes!

Says the Sissy using a glove to pick up a snake.....

Might not be poisonous but reptiles can have all sorts of nasty bacteria in their mouths that I'd rather not be bitten with, and the teeth on a snake that size would be plenty long enough to break the skin (speaking from experience on that one.) So not sissy - experienced & educated.

With the glove I could give it a little leeway and have some range of motion with its head which helps keep it calm, and I kept repositioning it so it didn't have enough range of motion to bite me behind the end of the glove. If I had it pinned by the back of the head the whole time (as you may have seen on one of those snake hunter TV shows) it would have been much more stressed and there was no need for that if it would behave with just the glove on.

No - the white mottling to the scales of its belly are a dead give away, a racer would be completely black save for a little light color under the chin. The rat snake has the occasional white tipped scales along its body, again, a racer would be totally black. Upon close inspection there is a rib in the center of the scales on a rat snake, like a ridge line, that racers do not have. The sheer size is another, conservatively this thing was 66" long which, while big for a rat snake, would have been an exceptionally large racer.

Racers are much more aggressive too, had this been a racer I would not have been able to get all the pictures of it in the tree and I doubt I'd have gotten one to calm down to the point it wasn't trying to flip musk on me or bite anything that moved once I had it cornered and tried to pick it up.

might explain the experience i had i told you about. all black snake.

Ringneck snakes poisonous?

Nice catch! Never seen one that big in CT. We grew up (and still do) with all sorts of reptiles as temporary and permanent pets. Very cool creatures. Keep the ecosystem alive.

Cool, I love snakes.

Awesome!

"Poisonous" with a giant I have never know a ring neck snake to bite anyone and they just may very well be the friendliest snake going they are slightly venomous according to wikipedia.

Diadophis punctatus, commonly known as the ring-necked snake or ringneck snake, is a harmless species of colubrid snake found throughout much of the United States, central Mexico, and southeastern Canada. Ring-necked snakes are secretive, nocturnal snakes, so are rarely seen during the day time. They are slightly venomous, but their nonaggressive nature and small, rear-facing fangs pose little threat to humans who wish to handle them. They are best known for their unique defense posture of curling up their tails, exposing their bright red-orange posterior, ventral surface when threatened. Ring-necked snakes are believed to be fairly abundant throughout most of their range, though no scientific evaluation supports this hypothesis. Scientific research is lacking for the ring-necked snake, and more in-depth investigations are greatly needed.[4] It is the only species within the genus Diadophis, and currently 14 subspecies are identified, but many herpetologists question the morphologically based classifications.[5] [size:14pt][/size]

Diet

The diet of the ring-necked snake consists primarily of smaller salamanders, earthworms, and slugs, but they also sometimes eat lizards, frogs, and some juvenile snakes of other species.[7] The frequency at which prey species are chosen is dependent on their availability within the habitat.[7] Ring-necked snakes use a combination of constriction and envenomation to secure their prey. The snakes do not have a true venom gland, but they do have an analogous structure called the Duvernoy's gland derived from the same tissue.[4] Most subspecies are rear-fanged with the last maxillary teeth on both sides of the upper jaw being longer and channeled;[4] the notable exception is D. p. edwardsii, which is fangless.[7] The venom is produced in the Duvernoy's gland located directly behind the eye.[4] It then drains out of an opening at the rear of the maxillary tooth.[4] Ring-necked snakes first strike and then secure the prey using constriction. Next, they maneuver their mouths forward, ensuring the last maxillary tooth punctures the skin and allowing the venom to enter the prey's tissue.[4] Ring-necked snakes are rarely aggressive to larger predators, suggesting their venom evolved as a feeding strategy rather than a defense strategy. Rather than trying to bite a predator, the snake winds up its tail into a corkscrew, exposing its brightly colored belly.[7]