Texas is home to four venomous snakes: copperheads, rattlesnakes, water moccasins (aka cottonmouths), and coral snakes.

Only 15 of those are potentially dangerous to humans," the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department's site explains . The prairie kingsnake is an uncommonly seen snake of open grasslands and woodlands, spending most of its life underground in burrows or under rocks. TEXAS HAS SEVERAL VARIETIES of king snake. Non-venomous rat snakes are widespread in Texas, pose no threat, and are good rodent predators. "Texas is home to over 105 different species and subspecies of snakes.

There is a snake however in Texas that is king even over the king snake and it too eats other snakes. Typical habitats for prairie kingsnakes range from cultivated fields and pastures, mixed woodlands and open meadows, to rocky ledges and bottom lands. There is a zone of intergradation between the two subspecies (see map below) where individual snakes have a mixture of pattern and scalation characters from both subspecies. These are generally accepted by ranchers and farmers because they eat other snakes including venomous ones. Harmless milk snakes, sometimes mistaken for coral snakes, are easy to spot with their brilliant bands of red, black, and yellow. I am talking about the Texas indigo snake.