VALENCIA COUNTY NEWS BULLETIN (Belen, New Mexico) 28 June 08 More rattlesnakes than in 30 years show up on biology teacher's land (Kenn Rodriguez)
Valencia Lorenz Krassnitzer says he's seen more prairie rattlesnakes outside his home on La Ladera Road in the last few months than he has in 30 years on the property.
"They come off the mesa," he says as he leads a reporter on a tour of the pens where he holds the exotic birds he breeds. "My dad used to have a dairy farm here, and in these dry summers, we'd get two or three a week, depending."
Lately the prairie rattlesnakes, which he says are among the most common in Valencia County, have been showing up with more frequency - 10 in one month recently.
However, unlike incidents with larger wild animals like bears and mountain lions in urban areas such as Albuquerque, the recent frequent emergence of snakes is not a sign that rattlesnakes are running out of food in the hills.
It's more a sign that people are encroaching more on the snakes' natural territory, says Krassnitzer, a biologist who teaches science at Los Lunas High School.
"It's not that unusual. The more we encroach on their environment, the more we're going to see them face-to-face," he says. "They're always going to be going when there's food."
Krassnitzer's pens provide snakes some food - not the birds as much as their feed, which draws mice that the snakes themselves prey on.
Krassnitzer says he captured two rattlesnakes near his pens in recent weeks - one five feet long - which he then released far off in the hills behind the pens and his home.
"In the mountains, you see the western diamondbacks and a few timber rattlers," he says. "But the most common ones I've seen here are the prairie rattlers. I caught that snake and put him in a five-gallon bucket and left him in the shade. Then I took him way out to the mesa and let him go.
"I used to kill them when I was younger," he says, telling one story about finding a rattler coiled in a bail of hay. "But these days I try not to. They're such beautiful creatures. And they help us out too."
Krassnitzer points out that by keeping the mouse population down, rattlers and other snakes help protect humans from Hantavirus and other mice-borne diseases.
He said that people living in outlying areas of Los Lunas and Belen can protect themselves by simply knowing the habits of snakes and being vigilant.
"These dry summers, you see them a lot more in the evening and early in the morning," he says. "You don't see them much in the day. But you might find them around the house in the morning; they do like to sun themselves on rocks and slabs of concrete. Like I said, the more we move into their environment, the more we'll see them."
Likewise, Krassnitzer says roadrunners might be more common in areas that humans live in because of encroachment on their environment - and also because they follow small lizards and similar animals, which are their main food source.
"They move and nest where they might find food," he says, pointing to a nest a pair of roadrunners have built in a plume of cactus just outside his bird pens. "This is their natural environment, so drought doesn't affect them like it does other animals."
On his property, Krassnitzer says he doesn't have problems with snakes killing his exotic birds.
"My birds pretty much notify me if there's a rattler in the pen," he said. "They'll be up on the perch making noise. I had a big one in there one day a few years ago, and they were up on the perch, raising cane."
Krassnitzer says being vigilant of snakes doesn't always work - he says one coiled underneath his truck one day and struck on one of his heavy work boots when he went back to get back in the truck. "I killed that one, but I felt a little bad," he says. But it's something you have to do if you live on the edges of town.
"That snake was more afraid of me than I was afraid of it," he says of the snake he recently captured. "So why go off and kill them?"
More rattlesnakes than in 30 years show up on biology teacher's land

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