This is who ate my fish!!!

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Author Message   Rylaff  My Weather Posted on Sunday, October 12, 2003 - 10:16 am:    This is the guy who ate all my fish in my pond. It is now a month later and he is still there!!! Any suggestions on how to get rid of him? Lisa Tetzlaff Florida zone 8b   Janet43945  My Weather Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 03:30 pm:    You could catch him and relocate him far,far away. Janet43945 Zone 5   Gardenshowlady  Posted on Saturday, October 25, 2003 - 11:12 am:    ick... I would ask "Wayne" the snake guy over that GW for his input. He is very informative. Post it at Nature.net & see what comes of it. Gardenshowlady   Karalyn  My Weather Posted on Monday, November 24, 2003 - 02:26 pm:    Okay, how big is that snake? Is it a garter snake, I can't tell. Usually my snakes go away after I discover them in my pond. Plus we have 3 cats and a dog and hawks live right near us and those are the things they are looking for to feed their young. Glad they don't like my koi! Karalyn Idaho Zone 6   Kathie2342000  Posted on Thursday, November 27, 2003 - 04:33 pm:    Sure don't look like a garter to me. Did you consider the Fish and Game commission, snakes have their good points but not if their poisionus. How many and what kind of fish did it eat and in what length of time??? Hope you got it befor it went into hibernation.Kathie2342000 Zone 6. Kathie2342000   Rylaff  My Weather My Garden Posted on Thursday, November 27, 2003 - 07:18 pm:    I finally identified it. It is a florida banded water snake. Not poisonous. I had it relocated to the next town so he wouldnt come back. He ate all my goldfish except 2. Lisa Florida Zone 9a   Karalyn  My Weather Posted on Friday, November 28, 2003 - 07:48 am:    I'm sorry about your fish, I have plenty to give you, but you are quite a ways away! I'm you got rid of you snake, yuck! Here's wishing you some new fish for free! Karalyn Idaho Zone 6   Patshe  Posted on Friday, July 07, 2006 - 10:02 pm:    Garter snake in our goldfish pond. will it hurt my fish? how would we catch it? Patshe - wv, Zone "5"   Tomsmith  My Weather Posted on Thursday, July 13, 2006 - 08:02 pm:    If it is indeed a garter snake, you should have no problem catching him/her by hand. Would be a good idea to wear some thick garden gloves as they can bite(caught a 3 footer once when i was young when it latched on to the back of my hand, scared me more than it hurt) and when they are caught they release a VERY foul smelling liquid that is not easily gotten off the skin(personal experience as a child, lol). The secret is to move as slow as you can to get close as you can and make a grab for it. The best time would be early morning when they haven't had time to get warmed by the sun. Tomsmith - ohio, Zone "5a or 5b"   Karalyn  My Weather Posted on Friday, July 14, 2006 - 02:28 pm:    I have had 4 sitings of garter snakes of various sizes, I think,in different areas of my yard. One was sunning himself on David's Pond's builder's block where I hope to soon have the skimmer hooked onto. I believe he was probably eating some baby goldfish which I just recently saw a tiny one near the water lily pads. I have seen this same one I believe peek through a little space between the liner and block at another time. A little spooky, but I'm not as spooked by seeing them like I use to be. As a 11 year old I was walking with a friend along a ditch bank near her father's day lily production garden. I saw a snake slither and I screamed SNAKE and ran. After I rested from my flight run, my friend asked what I saw. After I told her we just giggled together while catching our breath and had a good time. I was staying with my mother and sister in a university town while they took some summer classes. Fortunately for me I lived across the street from her and we hung out all summer. It was fun as her house was just below the University's gardens and there was a pathway where coeds could walk along the ditch bank area. Real nice and shady since the summers in Utah are HOT! It is too bad that many children in the US today can't have experiences like that close to home. So during my summer stay I had opportunities to hold baby garter snakes in the palm of my hand. That wasn't too bad as I held lizards, polly wogs, toads and frogs. I didn't touch worms or fish then except I would catch baby fish and bring them home and then they died for lack of adequate living quarters. Now I don't think I want to touch a garter snake nor am I fond of holding toads. But I touch and hold koi and goldfish and actually can pick up worms without my gloves. What a difference age and interests does to you. LOL Karalyn Idaho Zone 6   Karalyn  My Weather Posted on Thursday, July 27, 2006 - 11:16 am:    Wow, I had gone outside to check the pot and decided before I came in to finish this posting, I would feed the fish in David's Pond. All of a sudden, I spotted a garter snack lying on top of the waterlily pads, some are yellow, so he blends in well. He was in a double S shape and was sticking its tongue out to check me out I believe. I ran into the house, where's a camera?! Found one in DH office, went out to take a picture and it showed 000, but acted like it was okay. DS said its broken, then I saw on the side where the thingy goes was broken. Darn, then I remembered that my HP digital could be in the cannon camera bag with that camera. I checked the bag. The HP was in there, so by this time the snake had swum across the pond, coiled up in the cattails, but could see my head looking down on him so he traveled north to the other side of the pond and went along that side of the pond to the end where I saw him in the first place. He was trying to get out that way. The liner is very hot and is still exposed on the top of the block. He wasn't going anywhere. So then that's when I went into the house and looked for a digital then checked my bag for a better one. So I think I got some good pics. I was able to use a throw away before the digitals and took pics. That was when he was coiled around the cattail leaves. I was able to get him next to a fading Attraction waterlily so you can see the size of it and then watched him cross the lily pads and get weird when I put food out for the fish again and there was commotion going on. He swam away to the northwest corner and slithered down a hole in the 3 inch block. I got his tail. Creepy. So that is where he's been hiding, or rather he's been in the pond eating all the tiny gold fish, the size of a dress pin. But I got pics on a brand new throw away, who knows how they will turn out and I took several shots, probably a waste of money. That's when I had to find a digital. So the rest is history if you can understand what I wrote. hahaha! Had to tell you this exciting story that should be posted on the pond thread, which I will transfer. You know clematis and pond keepers get overexcited over the silliest things! Karalyn Idaho Zone 6 Karalyn Idaho Zone 6   Karalyn  My Weather Posted on Thursday, July 27, 2006 - 11:29 am:    Actually, this wasn't the main photo I wanted to post. I haven't done this forever, so now I'll try the other photos. Karalyn Idaho Zone 6   Karalyn  My Weather Posted on Thursday, July 27, 2006 - 11:36 am:    Okay, I have to resize the others. The site would only take these because they were under 100k. Karalyn Idaho Zone 6   Karalyn  My Weather Posted on Thursday, July 27, 2006 - 11:50 am:    This is where the snake went to hide. Karalyn Idaho Zone 6   Calvinchi  My Garden Posted on Thursday, July 27, 2006 - 12:07 pm:    Very interesting story and nice pictures! When I was young, I used to catch garter snakes in the rice fields. They were as long as 3 ft+. The snakes have flexible bones. When the bones are locked into a "s" shape, they won’t be able to move. Holding its tail and keep shaking it up left-right way would loose its bones and it would loss the strength. So we caught it by locking its body/bone in one hand - the middle finger on top of it, the index finger and the fourth finger beneath its body/bone; then keep shaking it. You have to catch it in a fast motion or it would run away. People won't do it here now, but we did: holding its tail and smashing its head on ground. Garter snake's meat was as tasty as chicken. So relocating may be a solution. Please forward your story on how you'll get rid of it (them) from your pond, and how's your baby fish doing. Thanks for sharing. Calvinchi - Ontario, Zone "5"   Karalyn  My Weather Posted on Thursday, July 27, 2006 - 01:33 pm:    Hi Calvin, Well, I see these everywhere, so I don't really know if they are the same snake. When I was raking our the yellow flag irises earlier this season before the water came into the irrigation pond (you can see bits of the irrigation pond on Noah's Ark. Under DS 15...) I saw a curled up garter snaked. It startled me, but didn't run just squeaked a little. ;) But I didn't bother raking the leaves out of that clump of irises. It is an annual event to see these snakes or snake. This is just the first time that I can remember seeing one in David's pond. I've see it on the outside of the pond, but not in the water before. I assume he was eating the baby goldfish. But don't know for sure. I use to see the snake in the tubs in my potting area where I had some larger longfinned goldfish with a plastic webbing or netting on it and discovered the snake had slithered up the graped vine and could fit through the 1/2 inch square openings, unless the openings were smaller. This is just eyeballing it and memory. So they just know where the water is. Or a cool place. Now in my irrigation pond are baby fish, but I believe they are sunfish. Whatever came down the pike from the Boise River. Or could be trout. All I know is that at the end of the season there are Blue Gill in the pond the size of an old silver dollar or maybe the size of a sand dollar. I know this because the neighbor boys and my sons drained the earth pond with a good pump, used my special fish net and put them in my koi pond! They survived over the winter in David's Pond (it is in front of the house) but looked worse for wear. So I had the boys take them back down to the Creek down the hill behind our backyard. They can't do that now as we have a new subdivision behind us and there is a fence blocking the way. Although that won't stop the boys I'm sure. But they are older now so we'll see. Karalyn Idaho Zone 6

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