There’s a Snake in Kentucky You Cannot Kill

So, here's the deal. Whether many of us like it or not, snakes are, for the most part, far more beneficial to us than not. Yeah, I can't wrap my brain around that, either.

My sister is a good example of why. She's deathly afraid of mice and rats, so she has no problem with snakes, whatsoever.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that.

So, yes, snakes take out pests. Or they keep them at bay. Both are good things.

I'm just not personally ready to call snakes "good things."

But Kentucky's Habitat Conservation Agreement labels one particular snake SO good that you are not allowed to kill it.

StatebyStateGardening.com posted the details of the agreement between Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana to protect the copperbelly water snake.

It is not only illegal to kill this snake, you can't even harm it. Or possess it, for that matter.

In fact, if you want to catch and keep a snake, you need to get a special permit from the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.

But that snake won't be one of them.

It's on an endangered Kentucky snake list that's longer than I would've thought. The list includes snakes I've mostly never heard of like the Kirtland’s snake, northern pine snake, scarlet snake, the eastern coachwhip, green water snake, broad-banded water snake, pygmy rattlesnake, western and eastern ribbon snake, western mud snake, and scarlet king snake.

But, yeah, the copperbelly water snake has been singled out for special attention and you are not allowed, under any circumstances, to harm or kill it.

But, since it's so rare, you may never have even see one.