I'm sitting here trying to go to sleep and it's raining pretty good here in Austin,that's great because I turned my compost pile today and added some week old cow pooh about as big as a toilet seat.I chopped it up with a shovel and added a bag of oak leaves and some weeds from my yard.Also came across a 4-6 ft.snake not sure what kind but didn't see a rattle so thats good
PS temp of my pile before turning was about 110 afterwards an a hour later it was 125F.

Most snakes in gardens and compost piles are ok. They don't hang around long.
Keep your compost aerated , moist, and very hot and they will go away.
The same is true for ants in the compost pile.

Happy Gardening!

Don't let the captain fool you, if he finds a snake it is halved and composted right away

That's funny!

I find a good amount of snakes in my compost piles too--everything from little brown earth snakes to bigger 2-6 ft. snakes. I try to remind myself they are there for the purpose of keeping pests down. The only time I really have had the long term heebie jeebies was last fall--I was mulching the garden bed with old, moldy hay from an old bale. I had been carrying the flakes around and finally put them in a wheelbarrow. when I lifted the last bit of hay, there was a 4-5 foot long snake in there. AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!
I had been carrying that snake around in my arms, and didn't even know it. i'm still recovering .

A friend of mine had graciously agreed to till my plot with his tiller. i forgot to mention I had put some fake snakes in the plot to "scare the rodents" away. I have never seen a good Baptist boy dance so well in my life as when that fake snake was tilled up into the air.

LOL - thank you for that visual!

My wife and I were on the neighborhood bike path last year when suddenly she went from mild mannered Frisco mom to X-treme off road mountain biker.... the rat snakes get pretty darn big and like to sun on the bike path in our neighborhood. I laughed at her but evidently God heard me laughing because a couple days later the neighborhood bobcat surprised me on the path and made me jump.