Copperhead snakes engage in nightly summertime feeding congregation

Via William Bellamy

 

 The only Copperhead I like is a dead one.

The first copperhead was not a big deal; if you live in the country surrounded by healthy oak/pine forest you expect to come across one of these common, smallish, generally non-aggressive but potentially dangerous pit vipers whose cryptic camouflage gives them their name.

Our chickens regularly catch, kill and eat these venomous snakes when the fowl find them under the duff or rotted logs or other cover when they are foraging in the woods surrounding our place. And I can count on my heart stopping for a couple of beats a half-dozen or so times a year when I chance upon one while cleaning brush/limb/log piles or otherwise rooting around in copperhead habitat on the property.

But by the time I'd had my sixth nocturnal copperhead encounter in a week, I knew this was different.

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