Just a note about the poisonous/non-poisonous remarks here. I live on top of the Blue Ridge Mts. and while we have Copperheads and Rattlers here, they thankfully are not very common. However, just 30 miles or so from here the elevation drops so significantly that these snakes are plentiful. I had a coworker that lived there. He kept a sawdust pile to mulch his garden throughout the summer. Usually when do shovelled into the pile, he disturbed several snakes. Common was the day he dug out rattlers, copperheads, and blacksnakes living happily in the same sawdust pile. Moral of the story...poisonous and non-poisonous will cohabitate, and not necessarily harm the other. As for me, I will kill every snake I can and apologize to no one.