Gray rat snake on the back porch
 

Today, Connie went out on the back porch to tend to the little citrus trees she is growing from seed, and spotted this little gray rat snake just sunning himself on the ledge of our screen enclosure. She came to tell me about it and I just grabbed a camera to snap a few pics. I then caught it, bagged it up, and later on we ran it out to the forest to let it go. She doesn't want it to eat her lizards.

Not the best pics in the world, as I should have used a flash to neutralize the mottled lighting there, but what the heck.

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A few days ago we found a much larger gray rat snake coming from under the front porch. Was easily 4 ft. long. We bagged him up to and let him go out in the forest. He was prowling around the bird feeders, so we know what he had in mind.

Only seen maybe a few in my life.

I think it is unlikely you will see these guys as far south as you live.

http://ufwildlife.ifas.ufl.edu/snake...ratsnake.shtml

Probably you have seen yellow rat snakes, in which the babies and very small juveniles will look exactly like gray rat snakes. They don't get the actual yellow coloration until they get some size and age on them.

I was in Levy county when i saw what i though was 3 small Gray rat snakes. The area just about on the coast and i saw the biggest snakes up there over the years. Almost stepped on a big cotton mouth once while looking for tree rats.

Think i have seen maybe 3 yellow rat snakes over the years while living in Tampa and Pasco. 90% is black snakes.

Ah! That makes sense. But there is a good chance that perhaps you saw Gulf Hammock Rat Snakes -> http://www.sunshineserpents.com/Capt...at%20Snake.htm

I've never seen one of those myself, as they don't seem to be commonly seen and are pretty localized in Levy County. Actually they look rather interesting looking to me. Wouldn't mind finding one just to be able to say that I have seen one, but I don't go snake hunting any longer. The snakes just sort of find us around here nowadays.

Yeah, we see a lot of black racers around here too. To be honest, it is one species of snake that I am not really all that fond of. Even as a kid, I never really liked them.

I was about 25 miles south of what is called Gulf Hammock. I would pass thru that area up to the Otter creek area where our club had Star parties.

Used to be really dark up there in the 80's. Where i hunted was just north of Yankee town.

Where did you see the snakes? Crossing the roads?

"Road cruising" is a very popular, and sometimes productive, method of snake hunting. The warm asphalt roads will retain the heat from the sun beating down on it all day long, and snakes will tend to crawl out onto the road for the warmth at night. Of course, there is always the luck of the draw of just being at the right place at the right time, too. Found my fair share of snakes on sandy roads over the years that just happened to be there.

Years ago a friend of mine and I went out to California for a snake hunting trip and found quite a few sidewinders at night on the desert roads out there. You would never see them during the day, but at night they were very common.

We just had dirt roads way back around the camp. I saw then around the camp.

The area is wet, and holds water when it rains a lot. Can't dig down since hard lime stone is at the surface. There are also holes in the ground that holds water and i have even seen gators in them. I am sure these holes are part of under ground caves. Have seen many very big Indigo snakes sunning them self in the winter.

I was sitting down one time hunting and had a very big Indigo just slide over my boot as if i was not even there.