Doing some rough blacksmithing work this afternoon in my lean-to shed, making brackets for a lawn tractor hood. As I reached up to get my big hammers from the top of the cabinet, I looked into the biggest pair of snake eyes I've seen in a while. A very large black rat snake that has been around here pretty much ever since we built our house in her territory. (I presume it's a female since most very large black rat snakes are.) It didn't seem particularly interested in leaving, nor to mind the intrusion, so I carefully got my tools, fired up my torch, and went to work. Snake watched me pound iron on the anvil for a while, then when I shifted to the vise to do some cold bending she stuck her head out a little further to watch that. Got done, put my tools away, snake never budged from atop the tool cabinet.

Later I went to close up the barn, and discovered that the snake had moved over there, hopefully to make short work of the aggravating mice. Never did see it stretched out full length, but at one point it was lying next to a straw bale about 3 ft long, and doubled up was a good foot longer than the bale, so I'm guessing a bit over seven feet long.

The "black" rat snakes we have around here are mostly hybrids between true blacks and the gray rat snake of the midwest. Unlike the true black variation they keep the blotched body pattern of the juveniles even after they get very large, but still have the characteristic black head and creamy white chin. I saw this one down in the woods below the house last summer and it was well over six feet then. Pretty good snake for around here. Black rat snakes live a long time (25-30 years, so I've read) and continue to grow the whole time. If I can keep my wife and her 20-gauge away from this one, it may get even larger.