Animal Kingdom in Conflict

Killed a snake -- a copperhead -- in my backyard earlier this month. Before I get slammed, allow me to make a few comments.

First, I did not want to kill the snake. But it lay in the path of Sam, one of our four pet dogs, when I took him out for one of his periodic calls to nature. Sam had been hit in the foot by a copperhead last summer and suffered "only" for three or four days, thanks to quick treatment at the vet's. Our neighbor's large German shepherd almost died after being bitten on the shoulder; she spent three nights on the brink at the equivalent of "veterinary intensive care." Our neighborhood is plagued by copperheads. Last year, a lady out for a morning walk got it on the ankle from a snake lying, unnoticed, near the sidewalk; she, too, was hospitalized.

Second, a week after our copperhead encounter, Caramel, one of our other dogs, and I sauntered up on a black snack farther back in the yard. I respectfully let that one go, knowing black snakes pose no threat to our dogs.

Naturalists urge us to leave snakes alone, even the poisonous ones. I generally agree. But what about the poisonous ones inhabiting our yards, where our pets like to roam -- animals not necessarily aware of the danger? It poses a delicate question, does it not? How, in the minds of nature's thought police, should we deal with threats to our pets from another animals? The idea of phoning animal control is ridiculous, since a) the snake will be long gone before the officer arrives, b) neither the official nor I can be expected to devote hours, days, potentially weeks stalking one viper in one of hundreds of residential yards, hoping to capture and "relocate" it, and c) there are dozens if not hundreds (if not thousands) of copperheads at large within a few blocks of our house. (I've seen enough dead ones on the streets to get a general idea.)

My solution was to kill the copperhead and say "How do you do?" to the black snake. What's your solution?