We’ve seen lots of dead snakes on the road this year, but not a single live one.  So it was quite exciting yesterday to come across a long, unscathed fox snake (Elaphe vulpina vulpina).  It was evening, and she was stretched out at full length, capturing the last of the day’s heat that remained in the asphalt.  This is often the death of these beautiful animals as they depend on external sources for their body heat and will quite readily use the road for such needs. Swerving around her, we jumped out and Kenton captured her by the tail.  She was quite strong, and deciding that she wasn’t ready to leave, tried a few strikes and rattled her tail in Kenton’s hand. (Fox snakes are often mistaken for rattlesnakes and killed — partly because their patterns and coloration bear some small resemblance to a rattlesnake’s, but also because they’ll often attempt to scare away a threat by vibrating their tail.  If it vibrates against dry leaves, it can sound almost like a rattlesnake. While a good defense against predators, it means that humans often kill them, mistaking them for a venomous snake). Then, quite to Kenton’s surprise, she musked. (“I didn’t know they musked!”, he exclaimed.)  It smelled like an extra-potent version of a garter snake’s smelly defense, but it was a brownish substance instead of the white that characterizes a garter snake’s. She was deposited on the side of the road, where she soon sped away into the grass.  The rest of our trip was spent exclaiming how beautiful she was, and laughing at how close she had come to latching on to Kenton’s hand or leg. It looks like she’s been around awhile to get that big, and we’re wishing her many more adventures and hopefully many more years of life.

We finally decided that we’d go ahead and bring snakes into our lives, but that we’d hold ourselves to a condition.  The snakes wouldn’t be pets so much as ambassadors.  As soon as Taraj and Katai (who were brothers and came to us when they were the size of pencils) were grown to an impressive-enough length, we began taking them to schools, libraries, nature presentations, and community events, where they swiftly became stars.  Corn snakes are so beautiful that few people can resist coming up to meet them, even if they’re afraid of snakes.  For hundreds of people, Taraj and Katai have been the first snake they’ve touched, and by the end of the presentation, many people end up having their pictures taken with one of these two brothers draped around their necks!

During the summer, we bring all of our snakes out to bask in the sun and experience some quality outdoor time.  While some of our other snakes are terrestrial, Taraj and Katai have arboreal tendencies, and love to climb.

It may be an unfair trade-off.  They live lives of captivity, only getting to go outside once in a while.  But they’ve made a difference for lots of people, and made a difference for lots of snakes, since many of the people leave the snake presentations with a new respect and curiosity for these wondrous creatures.  We hope that Taraj and Katai get to touch many more people’s lives in the coming years!

We were recently giving a snake presentation for National Trail Day and were talking about these tiny serpents.  This is Storeria occipitomaculata, but if that name seems a tad difficult to pronounce, you can call him the Northern Redbelly.  They might look innocent, but if you’re a small slug or a juicy larva, the Redbelly is one ferocious predator.

Having given hundreds of adults and children their first experiences meeting snakes, we’ve found it interesting that often people are more intimidated by small, quick snakes, rather than a six-foot boa.  The Redbelly is one snake that most definitely cannot harm you in any way — this little guy’s most potent defense was to squiggle a lot.  Luckily he held still long enough for a photo op.