For 19 days and nights my little bantam hen sat atop a dozen eggs, patiently waiting for the young chicks beneath her to begin breaking through their brown shells and into this new world.

Neatly positioned inside an old milk crate filled with hay and secured to the side of the barn, she would leave the nest only twice a day to briefly grab some scattered grain and gulp a few drinks of water from the fountain.

Most mornings I checked the small eggs while the hen stretched her legs, and everything had been going smoothly until the 19th morn dawned and I walked over to peek inside the milk crate as she picked in the yard. With only two days left before the end of the 21-day incubation period, seven eggs were unaccounted for and not a single bit of evidence was left behind in the form of tracks or shattered shells.

I immediately knew what the culprit was and most likely where it was hiding. Peering into the rafters I tried to find him, knowing he would be lethargic and nearly immobile after consuming so many eggs, but the old black rat snake which calls the barn home was nowhere to be found.

Thoughts of retribution immediately came to mind whenever his five-foot frame did reappear. However, I soon reasoned that a handful of eggs were not too large a price to pay for his annual duties of keeping the premises void of pesky rodents.

Three fairly common snakes native to our part of the commonwealth are roughly categorized as “black snakes.” Each of the trio is non-poisonous and quite valuable as a natural pest manager – if a person can get over the fact that having a snake around isn’t such a bad thing.

Most commonly seen and easily recognized is the black racer, a shiny, thin, deep black-colored snake with a whitish chin. I do not know for certain, but I would surmise that racers earned their name because they are very swift to slither off once they see a human or anything else the conspicuous snakes view as dangerous. On the rare occasion when a racer doesn’t flee, they do have a habit if coiling up and twitching the end of their tail as if it had rattles, but this is simply a bluff by the lengthy reptiles.

The virtues of the black rat snake have been appreciated by country dwellers and farmers for centuries. Our own Jesse Stuart must have valued them as well because black rat snakes have several cameo roles in his stories. Rat snakes are constrictors and great climbers – both fine qualities for a serpent that has a natural attraction to spending the warm months literally “hanging out” in barns, eating mice, rats, other small animals and, yes, eggs. Old timers actually used to capture black rat snakes and bring them to their barns and corn cribs as a means of insurance against rats and mice that devoured their ear corn and feedstuffs. From what I have been told, a large one rat snake would fetch a pretty penny back some years ago.

Unlike the eye-catching dark sheen of the black racer, black rat snakes are more dully colored and actually have a fair amount of very light yellow scales that form vague rings. Despite the rat snake’s ability to reach the ominous length of six feet, the reptile’s demeanor is passive – often a rat snake will lay coiled on a limb or tier pole and simply watch you work close by for hours without moving or trying to escape.

The peculiar black king snake is valued even by individuals who generally dislike snakes because this unique species eats, among other things, fellow snakes. Unlike the racers and rat snakes, I rarely cross paths with a king snake, but the black king snake is still easily distinguished from the others.

The sheen of a black king snake is not much different from a black racer, but its belly is a mottled black and white and the head is configured differently. Even though the king snake is capable of withstanding venomous bites from copperheads and rattlesnakes before ultimately consuming them, it does not grow to near the proportions of the black rat snake and black racer.

As diverse as each of our three black snakes are, they are integral parts of both natural and man-made ecosystems.

— Geordon T. Howell is outdoors columnist for the Daily News. He may be reached by e-mailing highbrasshowell@yahoo.com.