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[Music]
today I'm at my next door neighbor's
house and he was out here doing some
work on a play uh play area for his
daughter and while he was working he saw
a snake which he thinks is a copperhead
uh in this wooded area so I'm going to
take this opportunity to set up a live
snake trap and see if we can capture
capture this Copperhead and relocate him
to another area so it may take a few
days may may not happen at all but we're
going to go ahead and set the Trap up
put the just mice in it which is the
attractant that we use for drawing a
snake into a trap and we'll come back uh
for a few days and see what we catch
[Music]
uh I'm just out at the edge of this area
where we saw the snake he's got some uh
corrugated pipe right here that seems
like a pretty likely space uh he might
be hiding in the pipe uh might be
somewhere back in this foliage but this
is a natural uh line here that snake's
going to probably use to travel uh and
and stay concealed so we're we're going
to go ahead and set the Trap up in this
area
and want to get it down in here nice and
steady and then I'm going to use the
just
mice I'm going to place that
on some cotton
here and put that into the
Trap I'm also probably going to get a
few crickets and throw them in here uh
sometimes having a live insect or a live
animal inside the Trap will help call
the uh snake into the Trap even
[Music]
better okay this is pretty cool I was
actually able in the process of looking
for some live bait uh maybe some
crickets or something I actually was
able to find some uh some frogs down by
the
pond these little guys that were
tadpoles a week ago and uh now they're
just hopping all over the place probably
the same very thing that the snake has
been feeding on already so we're going
to go ahead and add this in with the
just mice as a secondary attractant and
hopefully we'll be successful here in
the next few
[Music]
days okay it's been a couple days since
we put the trap out and I didn't show
this before but we concealed the Trap uh
from other kids uh coming down here and
messing with the Trap uh and also that
that leaf litter that I have on here is
going to also allow moisture to stay
inside the trap a little bit longer so
what we did is we covered it up and uh
when I came down here I looked inside
the Trap and I actually could see that
there was a snake in there and I'm going
to go ahead and knock back everything
and if you can see right down here we
got
a looks like a juvenile
Copperhead
and yep it's all curled up right
here so it's been in here less than 24
hours
cuz I've been checking this trap to make
sure there it is
I don't see any of the frogs in here
anymore so I'm guessing he had a
[Applause]
snack nice little tasty
snack see if I
can show you a good view of this without
getting
too too wide open
you can tell it's a juvenile copper
head and let's see if I can get in close
enough
well you can just barely see on the
underside where his tail is yellow I'm
going to see if I can get him to move a
little bit
[Music]
okay take the snake hook here and see if
I can move them around a little bit if
you look here see right here on the tail
it's a little bit green it's starting to
lose some of its coloration when it's
really young they tend to be more yellow
but they use that to lure
in their
prey and
uh beautiful coloring it's starting to
change a little bit it's usually a
little bit darker in color
uh when they're really young this one's
starting to change more coppery it's a
actually very very pretty snake uh a lot
of people M snake other snakes for
copperheads but once you've seen a
copperhead it's such a distinct coloring
and uh pattern it's very difficult to
make that mistake
um a lot of people like to look at the
shape of the head I find that to be
fairly uh a fairly bad indicator of what
kind of snake it is I've seen all kinds
of uh non-poisonous snakes with that
sort of uh with that sort of pattern I'm
going to see if I can flip them over and
show another Telltale sign if you look
on a copper head the back end of the
tail here from the anus down is going to
maintain a
uh a pattern that's the same all the way
down the scales do not change they are
straight across on the underside on a uh
non-poisonous snake they tend to uh
become a split scale from the anus down
I'm not having very much luck flipping
this over so you can see it a little
part of a lizard in here that he
finished
off yeah the underside of this tail is a
lot more green if you can see that in
the video
now I just want to caution any kids that
might be watching this if uh if you're
not very very familiar with snakes and
their behavior patterns definitely do
not KN what I'm doing uh I've got snake
handling equipment safety equipment on
uh and I'm very cautious in how I'm
handling this snake and
uh I don't want any little kids thinking
this is a good idea to play with a snake
this is a very bad idea if you don't
know what you're
doing I've grown up around snakes been
handling snakes for 20 plus years and uh
that doesn't make me immune to a snake
bite though I just uh have been
fortunate enough to be cautious and not
get bit so I'm just uh trying to get so
people can see exactly what the snake
looks
[Applause]
like all right we're going to go find a
remote area to release this copper
[Music]
head I've taken this snake out here to a
wetlands area where there shouldn't be
any human conflict and I'm going to go
ahead and release them now got my snake
tongs here on hand just in case I need
them typically I should be able to
handle them just fine with just a snake
hook so I'm going to go ahead and open
this and try to coax them out of the
Trap and there's plenty of harborage and
areas around here where uh he'll be able
to
find doesn't want to come
out that way
there we go now let's see if you can go
the other way not towards
me okay there you can see is already
starting to blend with the environment
trying to find a little place to
hide slowly but
surely and that's how you relace a snake
out into the wild he'll disappear here
into that leaf litter and never be seen
from him
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