VIRGINIAN-PILOT (Hampton Roads, Virginia) 05 June 04 Increased snake sightings rattle nerves in North Carolina (Jeffrey S. Hampton)
Gwen Tatum was swimming last weekend in the Currituck Sound near her Bells Island home when two water moccasins passed nearby.
Tatum and a friend frantically ran for shore without stopping to look back until they were well into her yard. The snakes were still there.
“I’ve never seen so many snakes as I’ve seen this year,” Tatum said.
The water moccasins were among several snakes she has seen this spring in her yard and in the water behind the house she rents. Two weeks ago, she and friend Jeff Keene saw what might have been an Eastern diamondback rattlesnake, the most poisonous snake in the nation. Then there is the large black snake that regularly suns itself in the back yard.
Many others in the region are having the same experience. Reports of snakes are coming in this summer far more than usual, said Lori Watkins, a snake expert at the N.C. Aquarium in Manteo. Because of the number of reports, Watkins will for the first time teach a class Friday on snake identification to animal-control officers from Dare, Currituck and Pasquotank counties.
Pasquotank County Sheriff Randy Cartwright has had more snake sightings reported this year than any year he can remember. Especially rattlesnakes. “We’re seeing them closer to town than usual,” he said.
Neighborhoods west of Elizabeth City that surround the massive farming area known as the desert typically get more rattlesnakes, he said. The typical reaction is to get the shovel or shotgun and kill the beasts. Despite the fear they instill, it’s a mistake to kill snakes, Watkins said. Snakes eat rats and mice. Most snakebites occur while people are trying to kill snakes, she said. And some snakes, such as rattlesnakes, are protected by laws that make it a crime to kill them.
Calls about snakes are on the increase in Currituck County, Sheriff Susan Johnson said. She plans to send an officer to the snake identification training but said snake reports are too common for animal control to respond to them all. She urged residents to instead call a professional pest remover.
North Carolina was known to have the highest incidence of snake bite in the nation, but that statistic is old, said Alvin Braswell, director of research and curator for herpetology for the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. Only two people have died from snakebite since 1970. The last known snake bite death in North Carolina was in 1978, he said.
Six of North Carolina’s 37 species of snakes are venomous. In northeastern North Carolina, three kinds of snakes are venomous – cottonmouths, or water moccasins ; copperheads; and canebrake rattlesnakes. Canebrake rattlesnakes are a lighter-colored eastern version of the timber rattlesnake.
More people in the area are bitten by copperheads than by the other poisonous snakes in the area, Watkins said. But copperhead venom is not as potent as that of the other two species.
The last reported snakebite in the area came last year, when a Manteo woman was bitten by a copperhead, Watkins said.
Copperhead bites often occur at night when snakes are active, Braswell said. People should not walk barefoot in their back yards after dark, he said.
The deadliest snake in United States is the Eastern diamondback rattlesnake, a species found in the southeastern part of the state and farther south , Watkins said.
Eastern diamondback sightings are on the decline, Braswell said. A sighting of the species hasn’t been confirmed north of the Camp Lejeune area in Onslow County in many years, he said.
“They’re not expanding, they’re contracting,” he said.
But there have been a few people in Currituck who believe they saw an Eastern diamondback rattlesnake this year.
Tatum and Keene were canoeing two weeks ago in the Currituck Sound behind her house – the same place where the water moccasins were swimming – when a snake with unusual markings on its back slithered along the edge of the water.
Keene got a good look at the snake when he tried to strike it with his paddle. It looked like an Eastern diamondback, said Keene, who is originally from Georgia, where he saw many of the large rattlesnakes.
“Would I swear on the Bible? No,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure of what I saw.”
Increased snake sightings rattle nerves in North Carolina