Most people hate snakes, but did you know some of the top myths of snake control could actually be attracting snakes to your yard? In this post, you’ll learn the top 4 myths of snake control and how to keep snakes away from your home.
Having a well groomed yard will keep snakes out
A lot of people think that snakes will avoid your yard if it is perfectly groomed. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. In fact, much of a yard snake’s diet is very independent of what the grass level in your yard is like.
Most snakes eat things like slugs, earthworms, lizards, frogs, toads, insects, and even rodents. A well groomed yard can actually make it easier for a snake to get around and find food sources like these. Clean looking rock work, mulch, and other landscaping pieces can harbor just as many pests as long grass or weeds.
Typically these pests remain terrestrial, or hang out on the ground, but they have been known to also hide in shrubs and bushes. So having a clean yard may keep out some pests, it doesn’t inherently do much for snakes. Snakes also look for things such as rocks for sun bathing and hollows for nesting.
The only real method for dealing with snakes, as far as yard upkeep goes, is installing fences and other similar methods to limit access. These fences need to go deep into the ground, and be a solid fence.
Snakes can burrow under your fence as well as climb over it, so even this option isn’t a 100% guaranteed way to keep snakes out.
This fence option isn’t the most practical form of snake control and can be very expensive, but it can go a long way to keeping snakes out of your yard. This is especially true if there are specific areas that need to be snake free.
Poisoned rodents will lead to effective snake control
Another common myth about snake control is that you can poison mice and other rodents around your home, which will then transfer the poison to the snakes that eat them. Unfortunately, this one isn’t true.
Studies have shown that feeding snakes only rodents that have had poison in their systems, did not kill them. So this snake control myth is busted!
On top of that, if you are using bait traps to poison mice to try and kill snakes this way, you may actually be attracting more snakes.
Bait traps can kill off mice and rodents, but if used incorrectly they can actually attract even more rodents to your yard. With extra rodents running around, it gives snakes even more reasons to hide out in your happy hunting grounds of a yard.
General poison will kill them or control snakes
A lot of people try out the “spray and pray” method for snake control and hope that spraying pesticide all over will magically get rid of snakes. Unfortunately this one is a bust as well.
Snakes are carnivores and they only eat other prey. Most people think that this means that they only eat live food, but that isn’t the case.
Eating something that has died recently is perfectly fine for snakes. In fact, most people who keep pet snakes, only feed them food that is already dead.
So spraying and placing poison around your yard will really just kill other pests around your yard. Certainly less pest activity of other pests is great, but it doesn’t do much as far as snake control goes.
In addition to that, since snakes eat food alive or dead, and as we discussed above that most poisoned food (a.k.a. poisoned rodents) don’t harm snakes, you could be just providing an easy food source for them. This could attract more snakes.
Repellents can backfire in snake control
There are a variety of snake repellent gimmicks out there from special powders to ultrasonic noise emitters, but do any of them work?
Well as far as noise making devices go for snake control, they were actually found to be fraudulent by the FTC. They don’t work, so be sure to avoid anything products or services that use them.
Another common snake repellent for snake control are things like sulfur, mothballs, or other foul smelling things. Unfortunately, snakes don’t smell like we do as humans.
Things like these may smell terrible to us as humans, but don’t seem to bother snakes like they do us. So it could keep you out of your yard, but it won’t do much as an effective means of snake control. There are certain repellants that are effective on certain snakes, but you have to ensure that you use the correct one for the snakes you are dealing with. In addition, improper application of a repellant and/or a lack of knowledge of nesting locations could actually trap snakes in your yard – exactly the opposite of what you set out to do!
Beyond set up of physical barriers such as a fence and sealing entry points around your home, the only sure way to get rid of snakes is to trap them and remove them.
If you are experiencing snake issues, we’d recommend reaching out to a pest control service like Rove Pest Control for any of your snake control needs.
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