This time it was a 40" Texas Rat Snake. It was laying amongst the
daisies and got disturbed by my weeding. It then slithered casually off
and waited for me to leave. These are reported to get 6ft. or so and be
quite ornery if pestered.

They can get as ornery with any local mice or rats as they want :-)

I also read they will diet on geckos and anoles of which we have armies
of around here. We were looking at an anole sunning itself on the fence
that is covered with crossvine and suddenly realized there were about 6
basking on the leaves watching us.

In article ,
jOhN wrote:

This time it was a 40" Texas Rat Snake. It was laying amongst the
daisies and got disturbed by my weeding. It then slithered casually off
and waited for me to leave. These are reported to get 6ft. or so and be
quite ornery if pestered.

They can get as ornery with any local mice or rats as they want :-)

I also read they will diet on geckos and anoles of which we have armies
of around here. We were looking at an anole sunning itself on the fence
that is covered with crossvine and suddenly realized there were about 6
basking on the leaves watching us.

I recently had a Tx rat snake in my front yard. I first saw it when it was
climbing the side of the house at the front window! Silly me, I wanted to
touch it and it bit me!

A few days ago I found a snakeskin in the back yard. The skin was 4.5 feet
long, so the snake had to be longer. Don't know if the skin was a rat snake
or not, but I know from where I found it that the snake was headed under
my house. That's okay with me because it'll eat the mice that live there.

Pix of the rat snake are on my website. URL is below.

I also have lots of geckos, but not as many as last year. Hmmmmm. Wonder
where they all went. ;-)
--
8^)~~~ Sue (remove the x to e-mail)
~~~~~~
"I reserve the absolute right to be smarter
today than I was yesterday." -Adlai Stevenson

http://home.earthlink.net/~sme617