Green scene

On the Road: The good, the bad, the banded snake

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A friend of mine is a nature counselor at a day camp in Rockland County. Last summer, thinking that having a harmless, local snake would make a great educational project for the campers, he asked the camp maintenance staff to bring him any snake that they came across.

He was expecting a garter snake. Instead, one day they come running over to the nature center holding a closed bag with a snakehead poking out at the top. One glance told him this was no garter snake.

Despite the fact that most local snakes are harmless, it seemed copperheads also could be found in the neighborhood, and they are quite venomous. Fortunately, they successfully dumped it into a glass tank with a cover and were finally able to examine it carefully.

It was banded with red, black and white, and was quite beautiful. A call to the local state biologist clarified the identification: Their prize was a milk snake, which is, thankfully, safe to handle. After a few days, they returned the snake to the wild.

When I first saw the photos, I was quite taken aback. While I do not know much about snakes, I find them extremely graceful and quite beautiful — particularly if they are much smaller than I am, and not dangerous. However, the only banded snake I was acquainted with was the coral snake, which is not local, but is indeed poisonous.

Now the question arises, how do you quickly decide if you are confronting a harmless banded snake when you have little expertise? It turns out that this is a reasonable question, and there is doggerel to help you out.

Looking at photos of the milk snake shows bands in black, red and white. The poem states, “Red touch yellow, kills a fellow,” paired with “Red touch black, venom lack.”

We were on a road trip heading for Florida, making many stops along the way. As fate would have it, we were at Devil’s Millhopper Geological State Park in Gainesville. This park highlights a sinkhole created about 10,000 years ago.

Sinkholes are common in Florida because the underlying surface is limestone that is gradually eroded by acidic rainfall until the surface collapses, leaving these huge holes behind. This sinkhole is 120-feet deep and 500-feet across. The vegetation growing along the slopes into the bottom is similar to that found in the Southern Appalachians rather than the local Florida flora. This is probably due to the fertile, moist soil, dense shade and flowing streams, which are characteristic of the Southern Appalachians.

In any case, Florida is the home of several venomous snakes, and there was a poster describing them. Of course, one was a coral snake, and I am trying to show my husband how to distinguish a coral snake from its non-venomous lookalikes.

As I start reciting “Red touch yellow,” two voices chime in over my shoulder but with slightly different versions. One was “Red and yellow, kill a fellow, red on black, venom lack.” It turned out that these were two local exterminators who also have to deal with snakes.

In addition to the coral snake, Florida has five other venomous snakes — the southern copperhead, the water moccasin (or cottonmouth), the eastern diamondback rattler, the canebrake rattler and the dusky pigmy rattlesnake. New York State has only three poisonous snakes — the timber rattlesnake, the copperhead, and the Massasauga, which also is a type of rattlesnake.

All of these, fortunately, are quite rare.

I cannot stress enough, however, that if you encounter a snake and are not clear about identification, the snake should be carefully left alone. In all my years of gardening, I have seen a snake on my property only once.

When digging in the soil, I tend to lift up any earthworms that I have disturbed and put them aside to go on their way.

One day, I saw a rather long earthworm, and without thinking, I picked it up, and you have never seen two such startled creatures in your life. I’m looking at this animal, and it is no earthworm. It’s looking at me, holding quite still, as if it is wondering what I will do next.

I do not have a clear recollection of exactly what happened next, but the little snake and I parted company suddenly.

The Bronx Zoo has a well-supplied reptile house, and it is always a treat to go there where there is a strong glass barrier between me and the beautiful snakes in their collection.

Green scene, snakes, Sura Jeselsohn

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