THE OREGONIAN (Portland, Oregon) 13 July 06 Bad vibrations - Gopher snakes are often mistaken for rattlers (Bill Monroe)
I didn't hear the soft rattling among the leafy detritus but saw the snake's patterned body.
My eyes quickly followed its coiled form to the vibrating tail.
No rattles!
A wave of relief, then curiosity.
I wouldn't expect a rattlesnake in the backyard of my Oregon City home, but then neither did those construction workers a few years back who found rattlers in Lake Oswego.
But this snake -- a Pacific gopher -- was a lot bigger than a common garter and had rattlesnake-like markings, dark slashes concentrically spaced over its blondish trunk.
Pacific gopher snakes are often mistaken for their more sinister brethren but lack the long, poison-tipped fangs. Even rattlers, though, who do their best to avoid humans, don't deserve the fear and summary executions visited upon their sightings.
Sometimes gopher snakes flatten and hiss before striking out, earning them the nickname "blowsnake." They're also called "bullsnakes."
Gophers aren't seen as often as garter snakes in the Willamette Valley and the Portland area because they're shyer and less abundant.
Still, the gophers like Oregon, preferring oak scrublands in the valley and drier, desertlike climates east of the mountains. Western Oregonians see them more often near farmland, so it was a bit odd to find one in the emerging grass behind the house.
That vacant lot, however, is about to become new houses, so it may be the last time we'll have Pituophis melanoleucus catenifer for a neighbor.
Gopher snakes are big on bluster, according to the Oregon Zoo's handy Web site (www.oregonzoo.org). Click on "animals," then "animal fact sheets," and scroll down to "snake, Pacific gopher," if you can get that far without pausing to look at all the other neat critters.
Beside puffing up and hissing loudly, they often strike out at potential threats and vibrate their tails in leaves and other noisy grass to simulate that other, better-known, warning signal.
Besides not having rattles on their tails, gopher snakes also don't have the diamond-shaped skull diagnostic of venomous snakes.
They are, however, efficient carnivores, hunting bats, small birds, lizards, other small animals and even -- where the territories merge -- an occasional rattlesnake. They're common raiders of bird nests.
Perhaps that's what drew this one to the vacant, grassy lot, where we also saw nesting killdeer this spring.
Gopher snakes kill by constricting their prey, although the zoo's Web site says they kill rattlers by biting and holding the head until it weakens.
They lay eggs in late June and July, usually in cracks or spaces in warm rocks or vacated rodent burrows.
The young hatch within about a month, averaging 8 to 12 inches long at birth.
Like most snakes, gophers share communal dens in the winter with other snake species.
Sometimes including, as it turns out, rattlesnakes.
Gopher snakes are often mistaken for rattlers