Mark. Gooley wrote:

Around here (N. pensinsular Florida) it's something called the black
racer, and what's either a subspecies or a rare color variant called the
indigo racer. Powerful, fast-moving snakes (they don't call them racers
for nothing!), graceful of motion and arguably beautiful, and harmless.
I saw one on almost every piece of land I considered buying, and have
come to consider them a good luck charm. I have never seen any
venomous snake on my property: maybe the racers eat them. Everyone
else I've talked to in my church has killed at least one cottonmouth or
rattler or coral snake near their house; there's even a place that buys
freshly-killed snakes for their skins.

When we lived in FL while I was growing up, we kept the neighbors son's
pet indigo racer at our house. His mom was deathly afraid of snakes and
my mom loves 'em. He was the absolute coolest snake. Coral snakes,
OTOH, were greeted by an immediate call to the MPs to come kill them.
The coral snakes had a bad habit of crawling up between the jalousie
windows and screens on our house for the night time warmth. Beautiful
snakes as deadly as they are gorgeous.

So far, I've been watching my Granada vigilantly. It's doing quite well
so far. Perhaps because it was a potted Weeks rose that I bought
locally at Witherspoon's. It's also all by it's lonesome right next to
the patio so it also has minimal exposure to the black spot that has
been my curse in other parts of my yard. Like Shiva, I've pretty much
given up this year due to the deluge we have experienced this year here
in NC.

Susan - who's s.o. is highly enjoying her temporary credit card-less
state. The s.o. thinks this is the longest period of time I have ever
gone without buying *something* for the yard. *smile* As I reminded
the s.o., it's *temporary*. *evil grin*
shsimko at duke dot edu