My daughter loved all this! She was yelling "snake! snake! ssssssssssss. Snake!" Just so excited. We stood their arching over it, just looking at it curiously. The snake coiled up in the grass, in what looked like a classic snake defensive posture. My wife came out and I gave my daughter to her to take inside while I kept my eyes on it. Not wanting it to get away. I asked my wife to get the garden hoe so I could kill it. It was also getting dark so I asked her to get my glasses toot. She came out and gave them to me, but my 2yo came out too (with a tissue, thinking I was going to dispose of it like a spider). I yelled at her to get back in the house. She ran back in and cried in a corner, thinking I was mad at her. I put on my glasses and grabbed the garden hoe, but I lost sight of it.
I stood there for awhile. Scanning the grass. Waiting for it to move or just to catch a glimpse of it. I reached out with the hoe and lightly raked the ground to see if it would move or lunge again, but nothing happened. So I stood there vigilantly for about 10-15 solid minutes. Something caught my eye. A grayish scaly tail! I chopped at it and where I assumed the rest of the serpent could be. I raked it out and it was dead. Cut into 3 pieces. I am not sure on the policy of showing dead animals here, so I'll leave a link below and leave it to the discretion of the mods and/or anyone who wished to view it.
https://i.imgur.com/HSIKrhs.jpgI vaguely remember something about snakes will sometimes still be alive and snap at you even after you cut it in half. I went the cautious route and used the garden hoe to put it on a piece of cardboard and put it into a grocery bag to dispose of it. I went inside and consoled my daughter, reassuring her that I wasn't mad and I just wanted to keep her safe. We had pizza and she was alright. Later my wife and I looked up different snakes in Massachusetts and came to the conclusion that it was an Eastern Garter Snake. I had a feeling it was a garter snake as we saw a dead one in the street weeks ago while on a stroll.
When I saw the one in the street back then, I though the circumference matched this hole near out gate (which is where this all went down) and I had a feeling we had one in the backyard. It could have been one of the ant colonies for the bigger black ants we've seen scurrying around the backyard, but I had a feeling it belong to one of these snakes. I didn't think much of it because I had heard that garter snakes were pretty harmless to humans and thought to live and let live since it would probably be preying on pest around my yard. That went out the window once it snapped at us. Chances are it was scared or we caught it by surprise, but there's no way I am letting my 1yo and 2yo play in the backyard if this thing is going to snap at them.
I think I found a similar hole on the other side of the house in the backyard.