Taz, I' m a little like you. While in grade school I had almost 30 snakes in my back yard, either in cages or in a pit. All were non-poinous, as I only saw one in 45 years in Norther Ill. (A Swamp Rattler).
Acouple summers ago we wer infested with moles in the yard. The grandson and I caught King snakes and put them down the holes. Thinned out the moles. One unusual thing, they would not go down a hole that didn' t have a mole in it, had to find one that did. I think some of them came back for us to repeat the procedure.
Russ