Mowing the snakes

I'd been putting off mowing the lawn for the past several days because I've been feeling crappy because of the shingles outbreak and because it's been hot and steamy here - temperatures in the 90s pretty much every day.
I decided I couldn't put it off any more and fired up the John Deere after dinner when the sun was low in the sky and the mercury was back into the 80s.
I've known we live in snake country and am always a little wary when I venture into the far reaches of our property, especially near the woods. But I hadn't seen any snakes until Sunday evening.
I was making my initial perimeter cut down at the southwest corner of the lot when I noticed what looked like a six-foot piece of black electrical conduit. I gave it a wide berth and when I got about 10 feet from it, I realized it was a motionless black snake. Yikes!
I passed it by and found it was gone when I returned on the next lap.
I concluded it was as keen to avoid me as I was it and had retreated into the woods.
About 20 minutes later, I called to Maria who was reading a magazine on the back porch, to open the gate so I could mow the fenced part of the back yard. That's where the grass grows the thickest - maybe because it's a septic field that is also constantly fertilized by our two dogs.
Determined to make quick work of this relatively level ground, I gave the mower full throttle and blazed around the yard cutting 42" swaths as I went. I was on my third pass past the patio when I caught a glimpse of a colorful banded snake, a little bigger around than a Slim Jim jerky stick and about a foot long, hauling ass to get out of my way in the high grass. I was over him in a flash, shut down the engine a discrete distance away and shouted to Maria that I had just run over a snake - something that looked like a coral snake. She poked around with a stick and found the mortally wounded critter - he was intact, but hit by the blades in at least three places - writhing in the grass. By the time she finished photographing him for later identification, he was dead. At my request, she used a metal rod to pick him up and fling his remains over the fence where he could be properly scavenged and where we wouldn't have to worry about one of our dogs dragging him into the house.
I subsequently identified him as a seldom-seen Northern Scarlet Snake, a harmless type that lives mainly on the eggs of other reptiles.
The big black snake I saw earlier was probably an Eastern Race, also non-venemous. They're known to hang out near woodlands and to freeze when they sense danger, then go like hell once a threat enters their comfort zone.
So we can add these two to the growing list of wildlife we've identified by sight or sound here.
Our other discovery this weekend was the sound of one or more wild turkeys out in the forest.