BRATTLEBORO REFORMER (Vermont) 28 July 05 Rare snake nursed back to health (Cate Lecuyer)
Dummerston: With a body six-feet-long, the large black snake may look intimidating. But, rodents and other small animals excluded, it's more likely to receive harm than cause it.
An eastern racer snake, one of seven known in the state, was injured two weeks ago and is being nursed back to health locally.
Jim Andrews, a research herpetologist from Middlebury College, has been using a radio transmitter to keep tabs on the state-threatened snake for the past year. He said it was recently found injured on the side of the road in the Connecticut River Valley.
Dr. Ron Svec, a veterinarian at the Vermont-New Hampshire Veterinary Clinic in Dummerston, stitched up the snake's broken jaw, and mended its eye.
"We're probably going to lose that as a functional eye," he said, but it shouldn't affect its ability to survive.
Andrews said he plans to release the snake back into the wild as soon as it has healed, and hopefully the male snake will begin reproducing.
Once prominent in open pastures and fields, eastern racer snakes have been dying off in Vermont.
"There has been no proof of its existence since 1985," Andrews said, when one was found killed on Route 5 in Putney.
There, have however, been possible sightings, and tips from the Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center in Brattleboro led Andrews and a group of student volunteers to the Southern Connecticut River Valley.
"In 2003, we found a shed skin. When we went back the next day, we found a racer," Andrews said. The next year they caught two of them, and had radio transmitters surgically inserted so they could track the snakes' progress.
"Over time, they took us back to their den site, which was two miles away," Andrews said, and he found five more snakes living there.
The injured snake was one of the original ones with the transmitter that Andrews and the Vermont Department of Wildlife have been checking up on almost every day.
"We were concerned right off as soon as we knew he was on the wrong side of the road," Andrews said. "We were actually going to catch him and bring him to the other side of the road, but he got hit before we got to him."
Roads, he said, are tough on snakes.
"As far as they're concerned, a road looks like a nice place to lay out and soak up some sun," he said. Because this one travels with its head raised, Andrews suspects a car straddled it, and the snake hit his head on the underside as it was driving by. However, he said it is simply speculation.
"For all we know, a moose could have stepped on his head," he said.
Or, someone could have intentionally injured him.
"This is a big, black snake, and it can be pretty scary for people," he said, and one reason their population has decreased is because a common first reaction is to kill the animal.
Despite appearance, the snake isn't poisonous, and is essentially harmless.
"Most people take a lot more injuries from a plant in their yard than from this snake," Andrews said. The snakes won't attack unless threatened.
He said he's been bitten about a dozen times by this one, but only because he's handled it, and the bites rarely draw blood.
"I wouldn't even put it in the blackberry category," he said.
Another reason for their protected-species status has to do with development.
"They live in open pastures and grasslands," he said. "As you might imagine, there was more of that, say, 100 years ago."
Today, many large areas of land are mowed, "and mowers are not snake friendly," Andrews said.
In fact, the very area where Andrews first discovered the snake is scheduled to be developed by the Vermont Department of Transportation.
He said the snakes use the area as a feeding ground, and he hopes to ensure their future survival.
"We're going to work with the state to re-create another habitat to replace the habitat they've been using," Andrews said.
Rare snake nursed back to health