Do you kill snakes you find in your yard?

[anatess]

I was under the impression we weren't talking just venomous snakes, but all snakes.
This thread has certainly gone off towards "just venomous snakes deserve to be killed".

I think all mosquitos/ irritating bugs, disease ridden birds, large road crossing/ roaming herds of dangerous animals, frogs, toads and squirrels need to be killed when met. They cause so much damage to cars and people. Oh, forgot turkeys. We got a lot this year running amok, pooing on things and running into cars.

It's only right.

Oh, and also dihydrogen monoxide. Yes, it is a big killer. It actually forms WEAPONS of mass destruction that will break off of a colony and spear any helpless creature walking below.

I didn't get that feeling reading these posts... unless I'm mistaken, I think everbody here agrees that nothing DESERVE to be killed. Not even a mosquito. But, like one of them said, sometimes it comes down to a choice... when a mosquito bites, you make the choice to swat him not because he deserved it but because it's either that or get bit over and over again.

And venomous snakes is nothing like dihydrogen monoxide (H2O - yeah, funny). Venomous snakes are a REAL threat. We have wild turkeys running around the neighborhood as well and nobody has ever gotten bit by them. They've crossed the yard while the kids were playing and we can just shoo them and they fly away in a quickness. If they run after somebody, I would completely understand somebody having it for dinner. And it's not like we go out looking for venomous snakes just to kill them.

Why do you need a license to touch hots in Florida? Also, how do they enforce that?

No no... you need a license to OWN hots. You need a license to own burms and retics or any snake that can potentially grow longer than 8 feet as well. What I was trying to say is that they make it look easy on TV to pick up hots but there's a lot of training and practice that goes behind that. But for a HUGE majority of city dwellers out there - including me, they would get bit if they tried. But see, the trick is, unless it's a racer, a ball python, or a hognose snake, I wouldn't know if that snake is venomous or not. And I will bet you a gazillion bucks 75% of the people living in my neighborhood wouldn't as well. So yeah, if you live in the woods or something, you see those snakes all the time, so you would know what to do. It's like me growing up in the Philippines, I know exactly what to do if I got stung by a sea urchin, whereas a lot of land-locked Americans wouldn't even know what a sea urchin is.

I guess my point is, it's easy for somebody who has pet snakes to get on their high horse and say, You evil, foul creature killing snakes for no good reason... it is the same thing for somebody who owns rabbits to get on their high horse and say, You evil, foul creature feeding a rabbit to a snake... You just can't pin people like that. Everybody has their own perspective and they can only act according to what they know. It doesn't make them foul. It's all a matter of education. And that's why I TRULY TRULY MISS STEVE IRWIN!