Hissing could be a possum. Big teeth stay back.

Oh mercy, Paula, possums are something I never thought about. But something has been on the back deck the last couple of nights, it woke up the two doxies....one growled and hid under the covers, the other went on alert. It makes me nervous when things go bump in the night. Never made the connection to the flower pots though.

I watched a possum years ago when it encountered a chainlink fence. It climbed up it just methodically, then when it reached the top, it went down the other side head first as well. Just like a fuzzy tank.

We have possums here. Cleo had killed three since she came in August of last year. They mostly move around at night. You would think they wouldn't hide in a pot, but under or in a building. We have a vacant house down the street where the lady died with no heirs. We are currently waiting for the city to accumulate enough unpaid taxes to foreclose. We think the possums are living in the crawl space under the house.

bk

Hmmm. Pots that hiss. Just another pitfall of being a hostaholic I suppose. And another good reason to not block the exits. I'm waiting for you to tip out that hosta and investigate. Do have your camera handy - we're prepared to be gobsmacked!
Jan

You be careful there, Mocc. Could be a toad, could be a poisonous snake. You just don't know WHAT it is 'til you see it. That's the scary part, right?

Caution, My Friend
Don B.

Stand way back and hose that sucker down till something comes out ;)

What you do after that depends on your temperament, and sensitivity ! hahahahh

Oh wow! I would have run screaming into the house and sent someone else out to find out what it is. I hope it's not a poisonous snake...geez, I freaked out last week when I found a harmless garter snake in my yard. I picked up a rock and there it was....just gave me a small heartache...no big deal LOL.

I say you send your DH out to investigate and you stand back at a safe distance with the camera ready.

Linda :)

Now you got us all interested in what it could be. Best you put on gloves , your best leather boots an long stick and find out what it may be. We went scorpion hunting with a light when visiting our daughter in AZ. All was fine until we spotted one and all went screaming away .

Jonnyb..... You made my day and will giggle on that one for hours

I stood there maybe one more second, and decided discretion was the better part of valor, and left the area

==>>> can i loosely translate this into.. you ran away screaming like a girl????

lol

ken

ps: no downside to that.. i have been known to do it once in a while .... usually with every single hair on my body standing on end ...

Garter Snakes=Friends of Hosta. Big eaters of slugs. :) They startle me good when I encounter 'em in the yard, though.

Don B.

Hey, you are close to the area of those TV Swamp Guys, perhaps a scared baby alligator took refuge in your pot?

ok, How big is this pot?

Now that is a possible solution to WHAT. But baby gators like the swamp waters. What I'm hoping is the critter moves on before I gain the courage to tump it out and see what is there. If it is beneficial, I hope it was not pierced by the metal name maker, and it goes on to live a long life eating bugs. Never had anything hiss at me that way. Except a turtle which was actually crying because it had a fish hook in its mouth, and it let me take it out and turn him loose.

Tropic Lover, Almost Hooked, you inspire me....yes, I shall see what is there. Some time tomorrow. With a long pole.

You know, I had a field mouse fall into a waste basket in my bedroom, way back when I was a teenager. There was a big open field behind our house. It woke me up at night, and I was tired. So I put a lid over the waste basket, and in the morning decided I'd drown it.

I ran the water from the hose next morning into the basket. The mouse swam frantically trying to climb the sides. It got higher, the water swirling it around...and I couldn't do it.

Yep, I took the basket to the back of the yard at the edge of the tall grass, and there I tumped out the water and the poor exhausted mouse. It could barely manage to crawl away, and lost itself in the field of tall grass.

I just don't have the killer instinct, except for slugs and such.

Come on, snakes are cuddly things.

About 11 years ago.

Jon

OMG, Jonny, you gotta be kidding. That is a monster.

Faye, glad you reminded me of the boots. I have a pair on top of my winter clothes ready to put into summer storage. They'll do just fine for critter hunting.

My best encounter with a snake was the one I resin coated and mounted on a 6 foot long board (the tail was curled up to get all of it on there) and lettered the sign:
MOCCASIN LANDING....PLEASE DON'T FEED THE SNAKES

For as long as I worked offshore and was gone sometimes 6 months at a time, nobody every trespassed or otherwise messed with my little home on the bayou. Perfect deterrent to trespass.

Actually, my deckhand brought me the snake which was roadkill, flattened by some 18 wheeler on a lonesome road down in south Louisiana coastal country. Nobody ever asked if the snake came from MY YARD, and I never volunteered that information.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!

-Babka

Jon, there are two snakes in the pic, yes? I think?

Don B.

Maybe it's a vole. No idea why one would want to be in a flowerpot, but they're small and hiss if annoyed.

Yes, there are 2 snakes Don. The keepers wanted to put 4-5 on me, but I didn't feel comfortable without being able to hold on near each head. Not that I could have held them away. The muscles felt like steel cables.

They are Burmese Pythons, pretty non-aggressive. The keepers said they weighed about 20 kilos each (~45 pounds). Taken in Bali, when I was in between work assignments on a 2 week+ around the world trip. It is at Pura Ulun Danau Bratan Temple which is on Lake Batan. Mystically beautiful place way up in the mountains. It protects Bali from evil spirits, so I was safe.

Mocc, you are a taxidermist!! There seems to be no end to your talents.

Jon

If the pot is large enough my vote goes to possum also. I've never heard a snake hiss loudly except for a Hog Snake when I was a kid. A Possum now, well a possum can sound like an angry cat or a small steam engine. Even a baby Possum no more than six inches long not counting its tail can give a startlingly loud hiss.
My momma found that out one summer night back in the early 60's when she took some scraps out to the garbage cans so they wouldn't stink up the house and lifted the flattened out lid (all of our lids were flat courtesy of our waste disposal technicians) and was scared into mild hysterics by what she described as a loud growl from inside the can. I raced out with a flashlight and my 22 rifle only to discover a baby possum. I picked it up by the scruff of its neck and escorted it off our property.

Great possum story that, Troutwind.

Let me get my boots on and go hunting.
See y'all later.

Better a possum than some other things. They don't carry diseases and really are pretty sweet. They just look and sound scary. Not that I would want to corner one, mind you. We have rescued several babies that fell off moms sometime in the night.

Can't wait to hear what you have there.

Jon, jeepers, no way would I do that. Don't mind garter or black snakes, but that is about the extent of it. I actually wish we had a black snake in the yard.

I figured with the two guys running the operation and myself I wasn't in much danger. They can bite though. They had a huge trunk full of pythons. I don't know how they breathed packed in like that.

I haven't seen any black snakes around here. Lots of garter snakes around this year. It seems almost every day I hear one slithering around then see it. They are good to have around. As kids we used to go hunting Garter and green snakes in 'Big Woods' so I have never been very afraid of them.

Jon

Anti-climactic here. Sorry.

I donned my tall boots with wooly lining (part of my Nanook of the North costume), long pants, leather gloves, oh and a heavy sweat shirt, glasses and a hat. I took a long thin stick with me.

Sounds like I had a plan.

Then I plopped the pot over on its side. The disturbed potting mix was standing up high in the pot and I did not want to have something leap out of there in my direction. So it was turned over facing AWAY from me. Then I poked the stick into the bottom of the glazed ceramic container. It was so broken up by the aeration of the mix that this was getting nowhere.

But I heard not a single sound. I was getting bolder now. Maybe it was dead....maybe I'd poked it in a vital part.....what was it.............I reached with the stick over the pot and began raking away the loose mix that I could reach. Hmmmm, still no sound. I reached the root ball of the small leafed out hosta, and eased it out of the way. Huh! Not a thing happened.
I looked, spread the mix out to view any possible life form, dead or alive. Nothing.

I'm content that whatever it was in that pot left via its own abilities and was not dead. The identity of such critter remains unknown. Not knowing is worse than knowing. My imagination will have me alert for poisonous critters.

From now on, I exercise discretion in handling my pots in the Back40.

Man, I was hoping it was something cool. Hope for your sake it's not a pot hopper. WW

B-I have been having head aches over this. A possum and cats are the biggest 'hissers' I know of but I can't visualize either in a potted hosta. I am wondering if you, with all the rain you've had, could have had a trapped gas buildup in the bottom of the pot that somehow you'd caused to be released. Everyones speculation is fun though. I would have gotten a very long pole and tipped over the pot, running and screaming like Ken suggested until I felt safely away to see what was the cause. You could always repot the hosta.
Have you been pulling our leg? tee-hee! You are capable!
Theresa
So where do we stand GF? I am anxious to know. I don't run from snakes, even large pythons. A scorpion scares me more. But an unknown 'hisser' makes me nervous.

WILDer, I had not thought about a pot hopper. Now that is a neat term to remember. Let's hope not. BUT, if I see the signs like the loosely fluffed up potting mix on top of the pot, and maybe some spilled on the surrounding soil, I think I will pursue the varmint right then and there. I would like to know.

Theresa, not pulling your leg this time, just a real mystery to me.
I doubt it was gas, there was a 3/4 inch hole in the bottom of the ceramic glazed pot, and it was all so loosely mounded beneath the small hosta, that I doubt gas could be trapped in such a porous substance. The prong of the name stake is what I used originally to poke into the area beneath the fluff. And that is when I disturbed whatever, and heard the very loud hiss. Coming up through the dirt, through the dense body of the pot, I had no idea what it might be. Unless frogs or toads hiss?

I repotted that smallish hosta, Purple Passion, in a more supervised space in a very good smaller pot.

Is there such thing as a 'Hosta f--t'?

I won't sign this response, other than 'red face'.
No one will know who I am, right?

Nope Theresa, your secret is safe.

You know how, when you're reading a really good book - a real page turner, and you get to the end and it really falls flat and leaves you totally disappointed - (John Grisham writes that sort of ending IMHO) - oh well, It was fun for a while! All that suspense! Anticlimax. lol
Jan

I love Gresham Jan. But eventually it has an ending. Best to leave it on a fun note. After all, it is fiction. tee-hee

If mocs pot was standing in water the drain hole could have been blocked. Stranger things have happened. I have to laugh thinking of her releasing trapped vapor as a hissing sound. I would have run. LOL

I truly love all of you here on HF. You bring much happiness into my life.

A long time ago I'd enjoyed shooting my S&W 9mm semi. I'd carefully aimed it, flipped the safety off, squeezed the trigger - and NOTHING HAPPENED. I was scared. What to do? I laid my pistol down on the table and walked away and had 2 cupas before having the courage to rack the gun and eject the hang-fire. I am not a heroine by any means and not ashamed to admit it..
Book closed?
I have to go. I am going hosta shopping. LOL
Theresa

Re: hissing pot- In my area of LA (i.e. my yard) we have killed many venomous snakes. I have a schnauzer, who loves to romp and sniff out things, while I garden. This bad boy (if image uploads) in my yard last August has taken all the fun out of gardening for me. In the early 90's I was bitten by a copperhead and had the predictable 3 day ICU vacation, anti-venom inj., etc.I fear for my pet's safety and have researched thoroughly snake aversion training for, Bernard, my schnauzer. Closest clinic to my 70586 address is Spring, TX- 4.5 hours away. Moc., I'm trying to get together 9 other pet lovers to hold a clinic at my home in Ville Platte. Can you help by spreading the word? Would you know of anyone interested in this type of clinic? Thanks, Brigitte

Brigitte, that picture is impressive to say the least.

I know right where Ville Platte is, went by it every time I went to work in south Louisiana or Texas, for that matter. The Achafalaya Swamp has a LOT of cold blooded critters that would be unpleasant to encounter anywhere, but especially in your yard.

I was working in Intracoastal City, end of the road. Driving to the grocery store, I saw this humongous moccasin that was road kill. Popped my deckhand out of the car to bag that snake for me. I fixed it onto a very wide board that was 6 feet long, and had to curl the tail up to get it all on the board. Covered it in resin. Took it home and hung it above my little dock. Let me tell you, in the 17 years I lived at MoccasinLanding, with that snake hanging from a post beside the dock, no a person ever ventured into my yard, no matter how many months I was gone to work offshore.
Something like YOUR snake, wow, that should stop a burglar dead in their tracks---in more ways than one.

While I have many friends along the river here, I'm not sure many of them have problems with snakes. My vet had a dachshund come in for snakebite, it was bitten on the head and the picture showed how swollen the muzzle became. Schnauzers and doxies are varmint catchers, so you've got a job teaching them not to react instinctively. Has he ever CAuGHT a snake before? Even non-poisonous snakes strike and bite, many dogs with the desire to hunt snakes are quick of movement, and avoid being bitten.

Hope you find a way to teach your schnauzer to handle itself. Ask your vet about any other people in the Lafayette or Baton Rouge area that might be interested in the training. Lafayette is 350 miles from here, not many people willing to go that far from Mobile.

perhaps a madagascar hissing coach roach escaped from the zoo ...

google it and see if it sounds like ... what you ... thought ... you heard.

Or you get some "herbs" from don in colorado?

as always

^_^ --~

dave