SALINA JOURNAL (Kansas) 22 July 03 Wrong rattlers found at Kanopolis (David Clouston)
Kanopolis Lake: Experts suspect someone is responsible for a reptilian intruder that's slithered into Kanopolis State Park from its regular sun-drenched habitat in Texas and Oklahoma.
There's no cause for alarm, they say. But, still, just a couple of weeks ago, a western diamondback rattlesnake was discovered by hikers in the Horsethief Canyon area of the park, the eighth such large, venomous snake of its species to be found and removed from the park since 1991.
"I pretty much firmly believe they have been (dumped)," said Travis Taggart, executive curator of herpetology at Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays. "Often it's escaped pets or people who get tired of them. In this case, there's been so many of them, it doesn't seem like that."
There are five species of venomous snakes native to Kansas -- the copperhead, cottonmouth, massasauga rattlesnake, prairie rattlesnake and timber rattlesnake. Each occupies its own range across the state, though in some areas of eastern Kansas the species overlap. Still, there are fewer than 50 cases of human snakebite each year, and few if any victims are seriously hurt or die, Taggart said.
But the western diamondback is much larger than the native snakes -- stretching from 3 feet to 4 feet long, with exceptional specimens reaching 7 feet.
The snake's name is derived from its diamond-shaped coloring pattern. Their native habitat extends across the southwest, from northern Mexico into west- central Arkansas and west into southeast California.
Their larger size gives them proportionately longer fangs, more venom to inject and increased striking distance. The specimens found at Kanopolis are about 150 miles north of their natural range, Taggart said.
Snake in hand
The snake found most recently at Kanopolis was found by two families who were visiting from out-of-state, park manager Rick Martin said. The families were hiking off the trail a bit and found the snake under a crevice by some large rocks. They used a stick to remove the creature, then one of the men in the group grabbed the snake behind its head and took it to the park naturalist. Martin said it was fortunate the snake didn't strike when it was provoked.
"A snake that's that big and nasty and irritated ... Holding him (behind) the head is the best place to have him, but it's best not to have him at all," Martin said. "They knew it was a rattlesnake. I don't think they knew right away what they had. They said, 'We just thought it was a big rattlesnake,' and it was."
The snake was turned over to the Sternberg Museum, where it was killed for research purposes and put into the museum's research collection, Taggart said. Future DNA analysis of tissue specimens from the snake could be compared to DNA obtained from western diamondbacks throughout their range for genetic similarity.
The results could help establish whether the snake somehow arrived at Kanopolis naturally or was brought there by other means, Taggart said.
Joseph Collins, adjunct curator of herpetology at Sternberg and executive director of the Center for North American Herpetology, thinks someone is releasing western diamondbacks at Kanopolis illegally. The most telling evidence, he says, is that the snakes have been discovered consistently only in recent years. Biologists have done intensive searching by biologists in the Kanopolis area since the early 1900s.
There's no evidence that a breeding population could be responsible for the discovery of the snakes in recent years, Collins said.
Such illegal species introduction isn't new, Taggart said. Florida, over time, has seen 20 non-native creature species introduced and become established, he said.
"This stuff turns up all over the place," he said.
It's possible to raise and breed snakes in captivity. All that's necessary is adequate housing -- a large tank of some sort -- and lighting, to supply the snake with vitamins and nutrients from sunlight, said Mark Roberts, owner of Pet Life by Roberts, 1509 W. Crawford. For a snake's diet, mice can be bought from pet stores. And snake breeding "isn't all that difficult," he said.
Martin hopes to learn more about the Kanopolis snakes from the public, and asks people with information to call the Kanopolis State Park office at (785) 546-2565.
"If someone out there has a friend or knows of someone who says 'I've been going to Oklahoma or Texas and bringing these snakes back and dropping them off,' we'd like to know," Martin said. "We'd like to have it stopped."
Although the western diamondback is a reclusive species that would prefer to avoid human encounter, the large snakes still could be dangerous to horseback riders, mountain bike riders and hikers who use the trails, he said.
"The chances are slim, but there's always that possibility," Martin said.
Wrong rattlers found at Kanopolis