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Just throwing my two, or three, cents in:
We now live in Manuel Antonio, and used to live in the Florida Keys.
Three things seem to always follow the discussion of snakes in both places.
1) If you are not gardening, clearing brush etc., then you usually have no idea that there are snakes in your area, even though in both places there are many.
2) Snakes are very very very often mis-identified.
I don’t mean to sound like a “know it all” but I am very familiar with the Corn Snakes in Florida, and the Rattle Snakes, and they look absolutely nothing like each other, other then they are both creepy looking to people who hate snakes.
3) And at the risk of REALLY sounding like a know it all, there is no such thing as a “poisonous” snake, rather snakes can be “venomous”.
Quick lesson: You eat poison, but get injected with poison.I probably wander into areas where there are snakes way more than the average retired person and in ten years have only personally encountered snakes on five occasions…
The average retired person would probably never see one…
This is a beauty though….
From Six Foot Well Fed Snake Keeps Costa Rica Realtor Out Of The Garden at [ https://www.welovecostarica.com/members/2192.cfm ]
Scott
We have had many instances to view the fer de lance and other venomous and non-venomous snakes both in Guanacaste and in the Turrialba area.
We have ‘found’ live snakes in a file box, in a recessed ‘dish’ seldom of a seldom used stove, on a inside window sill, on rafters in the house on 3 occasions, and one crawled across our printer.
One dog was bitten by a rattle snake and another by a ‘big cat’, so, you just never know what you may find….:lol:Oh, now I see what your saying, yes, that is what I meant to say.
At least I can give up the “know it all” part, thanks.they burned the sugar cane across the road from my house. the next day my neighbor spotted a 24″ coral snake curled up in front of my front door. thankfully, he whacked it with a shovel and cut off its head, then my gardener did something with it before i got home. my next door neighbor also found a baby coral snake on her terrace. these are the first snakes i’ve seen in my hood since i moved here. yuk
I have been researching what could be done about the snakes and found a site that sells snake repellers, an electronic device that emits a frequency that only snakes can sense and it triggers their flight response. It has been used successfully in Australia, North America and in Europe. If you do a search on electronic snake repeller you should find the site.
The same or similar products have been sold for years to repel insects and rodents. Every objective test has revealed that they don’t work. So buy with caution.
And if they DO work, just on snakes, then you better look into a rodent one to take care of your ensuing invasion. Snakes are not our favorite things to have around, but I dare anyone to find a situation, in nature, that improved by upsetting the balance.
after the two coral snake sightings, i had another adventure last week. stupidly (and i won’t do this again), i left my sliding doors open to the terrace and walked next door to the neighbor’s house. i intended only to be gone 2 or 3 minutes, but then. . . i got sidetracked and wandered down to the house where my husband was working to see what he was doing. i had only been there 5 minutes when i heard my other neighbor yelling from my terrace, so i rushed back to see what the brouhaha was all about. she informed me that she saw a snake IN my house, and that it had slithered around the side of the round fireplace and was coiled up there. not to worry, her shovel and machete wielding husband was right there, along with my gardener and they managed to whack the thing to death and cut its head off. it was about 18 inches long, green, and very skinny, and luckily not poisonous (or is that venomous?). and the sucker bled all over the place, too. who knew? i’ll be glad when cane season is over!!!! this is the first year i’ve ever seen snakes in the 5 years i’ve lived here. i didn’t tell my husband about that incident for two days, knowing he would completely freak out at the thought of a snake INSIDE the house. i do occasionally check under the beds now, though.
I have lived in Arizona (generally) since I was a child. Our friend’s home was one of the first built in the desert near the Superstition Mountains to the far east of Phoenix. I remember vividly that it was not uncommon for them to discover rattlesnakes, large and small, on the patio of their home. I have had two or three rattlesnake “encounters” as an adult.
The home we sold last summer had a herd of about 14 javelina that trekked, twice a day, through my property. Also, we are very familiar with assorted scorpions, centipedes, tarantulas, some as big as my palm and my personal favorite…black widows. I learned very long ago to take a good hard look before I stuck my hands in dark or obscure places and to always keep the doors closed when I go out.
All-in-all, sounds like excellent training for my new home in Costa Rica! I was really glad to see the pictures posted for the fer de lance!
I’ve seen many snakes on my property.At least one a week.
Terciopelo, rattler, yellow eyelash viper, mica,boa, mussurana, coral snake,vine snake..many more.
I’m up near Arenal.
My dog got nailed by a terciopelo.
I had the antivenin in the fridge. No biggie.
He was swollen for a few days.[quote=”pranaspakeywest”]And if they DO work, just on snakes, then you better look into a rodent one to take care of your ensuing invasion. Snakes are not our favorite things to have around, but I dare anyone to find a situation, in nature, that improved by upsetting the balance.[/quote]
Hear, hear. Live and let live. God put snakes on earth to control rodents.
Removing the snake to a remote area is the best tack. If you are inexperienced try to find someone to help. Having said that and being equiped to handle the situation, we have not seen a snake larger than 12″ and certainly not any Fer de Lance.
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