GAZETTE-TIMES (Corvallis, Oregon) 10 September 07 Backyard is snake heaven (Pat Wray)
There are 30 or so species of garter snakes in North America and many are present in and around Corvallis. I’d be willing to bet that most have representatives living in my back yard. This is not an entirely natural phenomenon. I have often captured and transplanted snakes to my yard. Sometimes I have rescued snakes from roadways. Other times I have moved them from places where they were not wanted. With the exception of a few bull snakes and alligator lizards, all have been garter snakes.
In many ways, our yard is snake heaven; rock walls surround our flower beds, I’ve collected enough rocks from around the country to build a large rock pile and because we heat our house with wood, anywhere from five to 13 cords of firewood are stacked in the back yard. There are lots of places to hide, and the garter snakes use them all. Many of the colors of the rainbow are present here; green, red, orange, black, brown, white, yellow and even a kind of blue.
I’ve never seen snakes as evil or even particularly scary. I think of them in the same way I think of food. If they’re not poisonous, they’re probably good, although I have to admit that some non-poisonous varieties, like the aggressive bull snakes, can still be pretty irascible.
Capturing garter snakes is easy; they are neither wary nor fast and you have to work to make them mad enough to bite. I occasionally carry paper sacks with airholes to transport them, but generally I just hold them or put them in a pocket. While garter snakes are too well mannered to bite, they have no problem with dropping a musky secretion on you from their anus. Like most anal secretions, this potion is vile, and I can tell you from experience that if you let it build up in your pocket, people will look at you funny.
There are several reasons to enjoy snakes around your house, their elegant beauty, for one. But they are also voracious feeders, and with the exception of earthworms and frogs, most of their preferred dinner items are bad for your garden. Where once we struggled against a vast army of slugs, we now seem to be free of them. I haven’t seen a slug in our yard for three years.
Garter snakes are also a great deal of fun to watch. They are not constrictors so they don’t crush their prey. They are not poisonous, so they can’t immobilize or kill their prey with a single bite. They are basically blue-collar killers. They bite their prey, hold on until it gets real tired, then they swallow it alive and whole. It’s not a good deal for the prey but it’s exciting to watch. You’d be amazed at the fight a good-sized earthworm can put up.
About the only drawback to having a bunch of snakes in your yard is their effect on the occasional visitor who does not like snakes, or who, like our neighbor, Gloria Munger, is deathly, appallingly, pathologically afraid of them. If there were an award for the best neighbor in the world, Gloria would win, hands down. Thoughtful, helpful and amazingly willing to spend her own time helping to care for her neighbors’ places when they are gone, Gloria is the sort of person around which great neighborhoods are built. Our plants and garden always look better after we return from an absence than they did before we left because they thrive under Gloria’s care. But she is afraid of snakes and when Gloria is afraid of something, it dies, usually in small pieces. I am very careful never to startle her.
I like to think Gloria has softened her approach somewhat over the years; she will now usually call me and ask if I want another snake before she goes after it with a hoe. Several of my recent acquisitions have come from her yard. Gloria stops by regularly to collect Annie, her Lhasa Apso, who comes over to bark at me and terrorize my three much larger hunting dogs. I no longer have any feeling in my right thumb because of Annie, but that’s a different story.
If Gloria hasn’t become a less dedicated snake killer, perhaps the snakes have simply learned to avoid her. Just the other day I was kneeling next to a flower bed, working on a sprinkler when Gloria came over. I can’t be perfectly sure, but I thought I heard a tiny siren sound from somewhere below me, followed by a small, frightened voice, “Slither for your lives! She’s coming!”
Backyard is snake heaven