A solution to our mouse problem

Our cat may not be very good at keeping the mouse population down at our house, but these snakes will be. For a couple weeks the kids have been telling me that there is a snake living under their playset. Every time I'd go down to see it, it would've crawled back under the playset. Finally one day Krystal told me that there were two snakes down there. Sure enough there were two Black Ratsnakes. I caught them both and let all the kids touch them, but I wouldn't let them hold them because the snakes were not being very calm. One of them kept shaking his tail and spreading a musk all over me (it smelled pretty bad). The other one kept hissing. As I walked away from the playset, they got even more agitated, but as I walked back they calmed down a little. I determined from their behavior that they must be a male and female either caught in the act of mating or protecting their eggs. After a couple pictures, we let them go back under the playset. According to the internet and if my inclinations are correct, we should be seeing some baby snakes sometime around July.

Clarissa is a girl after my own heart. She wanted so badly to hold one of the snakes (the one that didn't smell), but I would only let her touch it and drape it's tail over her shoulder or arm.