I came home from getting some mulch at Home Depot today to find one of my neighbors and her 2 kids at my house waiting for me.
They were walking the dog and when they got back to the front of their house, they saw a snake and immediately turned around and came to my house frantic and scared about a snake being in front of their house.
Well, I got in the driveway and was met with screaming that there was a snake and I had to get rid of it right away.
I asked them to describe it for me and was told it was small and black with orange stripes. Interesting because that is not the coloration of the typical native snakes around here. The only thing I could think of that resembled their ID was either a garter where they mistook the yellow for orange or a young eastern hognose that was brightly colored with nice orange, black and grey markings.
So I grab a couple of different size hooks and a bag and head back up the road with them. I go to the front yard and start looking around. I don't see anything and figured the snake moved on. Meanwhile, they had stayed farther back down the road and were calling to me that the snake is stil there and they can see it. It wasn't in the yard but in the road in front of the house. OK. It's in the road and I started looking in the wrong area. I walk down the driveway and what do you know.
Right there in front of me in the road is a 6 inch black snake with orange stripes! I picked it up and put it in my pocket. That caused them to scream that I was crazy and going to get bit and die from the coral snake.
I walk down to them and pull the snake out of my pocket and go to hand it to my neighbors daughter. Her mother screams and the asks what type it was and why am I giving it to her daughter? I causally explain that the snake is harmless and would not be any threat to anyone.
After all, no one has ever been bitten by a rubber snake (at least not that I know of).