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ORANGE LEADER (Texas) 07 July 04 Season for snakes: Close coral encounters (Gary Perilloux)
Orange County residents have reported multiple sightings of coral snakes at their homes in recent days.
Karen O'Connor said her 2-year-old grandson just missed a close encounter with a coral snake when her observant nephew, 28-year-old Jason Buxton, spotted a small coral snake wrapped around her grandchild's Magna-Doodle toy.
The incident occurred Sunday in West Orange.
"It had come in from the outside," O'Connor said, referring to the snake. "We were just really lucky that my nephew saw it instead of my grandson getting hold of it."
Monday night, another caller reported finding a coral snake in her grocery bags after returning home from the store.
O'Connor said her neighbor killed a coral snake in the yard within the last month.
It's the season for snakes, and wildlife experts say calm observation and common sense are called for when dealing with the Texas coral snake, a small but highly poisonous reptile.
A mnemonic device, adopted by the Boy Scouts, serves well in identifying coral snakes.
It goes:
Red on yellow, kill a fellow
Red on black, friend of Jack
And though coral snakes typically are 2.5 feet or shorter, they can pack a dangerous, life-threatening bite.
"Definitely," said Joel Ardoin, Orange County extension agent. "If they're agitated enough and they're in the right spot on your body, those little fangs can get that venom injected into you."
Ardoin said avoiding them altogether is best, but if you're faced with O'Connor's situation - a snake in the house - be very cautious.
"You've got to be purposefully handling or step on them by accident before they would strike," he said. "Normally, they're going to avoid you. But don't pick them up. For sure, don't grab them."
Snakes that mimic the coral snake appearance include the Mexican milk snake, though it's usually confined to south central Texas and below, and the scarlet king snake and scarlet snake.
None of those other snakes, however, has the red and yellow bands touching on their skins.
Ardoin said actual coral snake bite incidents are fairly rare, but there's a good reason why sightings are on the rise.
Rains that exceeded June's average mark by 10 inches or more in the area are playing havoc with the coral snake and other creatures.
"That makes a lot of things move around - not just coral snakes," said Andy Price, a state herpetologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. "But since they spend most of their time underground or underneath things, if they get flooded out they're going to be moving to a drier spot."
Safely removing a coral snake with thickly gloved hands and an implement to keep the snake at arm's length is ideal, he said. Sometimes, killing the snake may be the unavoidable solution.
"If it's in a situation where you can't do anything about it, then dispatching it is in order," Price said. "But you want to make sure it's not a coral snake mimic."
There are other tipoffs to the snake's identity besides its colored bands.
Maj. Ted Tolle, Region 4 director for the wildlife department, said the coral snake's head is small and the body usually doesn't exceed 2.5 feet.
"As far as characteristics, they're normally not big," he said. "So a smaller snake is not going to bite you in the leg normally or between the toes like a rattlesnake that's got a big mouth on it."
Unlike a pit viper, a coral snake's fangs are smaller, permanently erect, and could entail some chewing before it's able to inject venom.
But it's at that point that the casual outdoorsman could make a fatal slip.
The reaction induced by a coral snake bite differs from a moccasin or rattlesnake.
Symptoms might not be noticeable at first, but bite victims should go to an emergency room, Price said.
"It's not a tissue destroyer, so there's not a lot of pain or discoloration right away," he said about the coral bite. "With coral snake venom and other related snakes like cobras, it works on the nervous system and it blocks the point where nerves govern what the muscles do."
The upshot is the body's nervous system could lose the ability to tell its lungs to breathe, leading to suffocation.
Hospital emergency rooms stock anti-venom remedies, and they can put someone on an artificial respirator until the danger passes.
"It's best to check it out if you think it's a coral snake," Price said. "A lot of people get bit when they're gardening and they can't see what they're pulling. The remedy for that is to wear thick gloves.
"The thing you want to avoid is handling (the snake) with your bare hands in any way, shape or form where it can grab hold of your skin."
Ardoin said coral snakes aren't aggressive but they not averse to living around homes.
"With all the rainfall we've had this spring, I can see where they would maybe come out more to a little bit higher ground," he said. "They're not scared like other snakes would be. ... They don't mind living between homes.
That might mean finding them under old logs or flagstones near a home, Tolle said.
"They're more of a burrower," he said. "They come to the surface after rains to feed on small lizards."
Contrary to some thought, coral snakes aren't merely nocturnal but are active during daylight and evening hours, Tolle said.
If one were to draw a line from Big Bend National Park to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, coral snakes typically would be found below that line but not above it, Tolle said.
And it's important to remember that several harmless snakes bear similar colors, the wildlife experts said.
Children are prone to pick up the corals and related snakes because of their vivid appearance.
"Obviously, keep the kids and pets away from them," Tolle said. "You want to try to isolate it to a particular area and know where it is. I would avoid trying to catch it per se. But (use) some kind of instrument where you could pin it down - you might use a hoe.
"Then entrap it in a box or bucket or trash can it can't get out of and take it outside and dispose of it."
Good common sense must prevail when facing a coral snake encounter, he said.
That's something that West Orange's Karen O'Connor has taken to heart.
"A lot of times I get up in the middle of the night and walk barefoot into the kitchen," she said. "Not anymore."
Season for snakes: Close coral encounters

I do not like that mnemonic device the article cites. The rhyme is just too easy to get wrong. Several years ago, our newspaper ran an article on snakes & gave the rhyme about coral snake color pattern & got it bass-ackwards. If a bunch of college educated writers & editors can screw up a simple rhyme that readily, how does one expect the general public to get it right? I have always told people to think of a traffic light when trying to figure out a coral snake. If the warning colors
(red & yellow) touch, it's the coral...if not, it is one of the mimic snakes.

~~Greg~~