17 May 03
Snakes Around the House
A fear of snakes seems to be almost universal, a function perhaps of our having evolved on the savannah… a fear we share with most mammals. One of my earliest memories is of my father trying to dispatch one (a harmless garter?) with a pitchfork over the neighbor’s fence, the dog barking madly. Whether learned or innate, this fear is reinforced from an early age.
Not seeing many others growing up, other than the odd water snake in Spain or even, occasionally, a viper (Vipera aspis), few indeed considering how much wildcamping we did and how wide open my eyes were for birds, I retained a vague but not very realistic fear of snakes. It wasn’t until we lived in a cabin in the mountains above Santa Barbara during a big El Nio year-which brought a surge of rodents-that I truly learned to appreciate them.
There are no rattlesnakes in this flood plain where we now live which, though tamed and leveed and corralled is still a prime target for a 100-year flood event. There are, however, gopher snakes and even king snakes. We regularly shunt the gopher snakes off the road or bike path where they are sunning themselves after a cool, wet winter. At right is a young king snake (Lampropeltis getulis) just outside our back door, moving toward my bicycle wheel.
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I loved growing up in the Napa Valley. Rattlers were a part of that environment. At that time the Napa Valley was simply a rural area, not a showy environment for the wealthy.
Yesterday, while I was running along the top of a levee near our house, I saw a four-foot gopher snake emerge from the atll grass and head straight for me. He (?) slithered without any hesitation at all, made the fifteen feet between him and me in maybe twenty seconds, and went between my feet, rubbed up against my right heel, then headed into the seasonal wetlands that abut a housing development along Pinole Creek.
Got home to an excited email from my friend Ron, who, while hiking with her husband Joe, saw a prime example of the lately notorious Masticophus lateralis, the endangered California Whipsnake. Good timing: Joe’s working on a whipsnake piece for Faultline.
The coastal Lampropeltus, however, has long been my favorite – edging out even the San Francisco Garter. Wish more of them would come visit.
We have several species of snakes in England, including the Viper and Grass Snake. Even lizards, quite common thing up in Scotland is seeing a lizard sunning itself during summer (obviously not in cities).