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May 30, 2002 - Singing the snake's praisesThe Suffolk Times • May 30, 2002 S1,8n tngt e snake's THERE ARE NO POISONOUS snakes on Long Island. I repeat, there are no poisonous snakes on Long Island. I put this at the beginning of my article because there are those who read the first lines and then jump to something else and I wanted to get the point , across to everyone. We only have about six species of snakes on Long Island out of the 3,000 that roam worldwide, and yet to some, no matter how many times we say it, snakes are thought of as being repulsive and slimy, which FOCU$ they are not. ON They are dry skinned and NATURE have scales on by Paul their bodies that Stoutenburgh help as they move along. Over their scales is a thin transparent layer that covers the entire body and is shed whenever the snake starts to grow, something like a crab. Remember, we have crabs that leave their shells and become soft crabs for a period and then harden up to a larger size. This is how they expand and grow, and so it is with the snake. When the snake wants to remove its old skin, it finds something to rub against and it completely sheds. You can always tell when a snake is going to shed because it has a sort of milky covering over its eyes. The transpar- ent layer covers everything, including the eyes. The discarded skin is often used, as you may have read in this col- umn last week, by the crested fly- catcher in building its nest. I hear the flycatcher's raucous call in our woods nearby, which means it's building its semi-cavity-nest some- where and will probably use a snake skin in its nest building. But snakes are becoming more and more difficult to find. So when a lady called telling me she had a snake of praises Photo by Paul Stoutenburgh Snakes shed their skin just as crabs shed their shells to grow. This is a black snake skin found on Gardiners Island back in 1976. some sort in her window well and would appreciate having it removed, we were glad to oblige. Snakes have the ability_ to climb — some are even able to climb trees — but when you have smooth surfaces, the snake finds" it difficult to grasp onto anything so that it can move itself ahead, so when we got to the lady's house in the woods there was a garter snake, most content. We could tell it was a garter snake because of the yellow line down its back and on its sides. I immediately reached out and picked it up and put it in a jar: I could feel its cold body, as all reptiles are cold - blooded. This harmless little snake lives on insects of all sorts, slugs and whatever. Sometimes it will even take small frogs or toads. Snakes have the ability to disjoint their jaw so they can open their mouth wider and therefore accommodate the larger prey that. it occasionally seeks. I know this to be a fact because we used to keep snakes temporarily and when we fed one something too large. it would open its mouth and, through undulations and muscle movements, slowly move the food we had given it and swallow it whole. (All snakes have teeth but they don't use them for chewing.) Sometimes a tail or leg would still be hanging out of its mouth as the food slowly worked its way down into the stomach, where the powerful juices dissolve everything. This tells us that snakes don't have to eat very often. One good meal will last weeks, even months, sometimes. One of the problems snakes are fac- ing is, of course, that they are losing their habitat. Then there's the added danger of a .snake crossing our lawns while we are mowing.our grass and don't see the snake in the grass and we do it in as we pass over it with our power mowers. Being cold - blooded, it also seeks warm spots, which often means the sun - warmed blacktop road that feels like a blanket to the snake; therefore it will seek these roadways out to warm up on and, of course, a passing vehicle may do it in. Probably the snake we get the most -alls about is the milk snake, which many people think looks like a con- perhead. It sits in sort of a striking. position that makes people leery of it, which I can appreciate. Milk snakes seem to find their way into cellars when people leave their cellar doors open and then they will call me and say, "There is a snake in my cellar," and sure enough, it is a milk snake that has gotten in there. The most dis- appointing part of calls about snakes is that people ask me to come identify a snake and when I get there it has been beaten to death because many people feel that all snakes are no good. What a shame. What misconceptions people have about the world about us. I said that the snakes were cold - blooded and they hibernate during the winter, usually in groups. I can remember one time splitting wood in the middle of winter and as I worked my way into the woodpile I came across a cluster of garter snakes that had wintered together. They'seem to congregate in one place for warmth and protection. In some places upstate, literally hundreds of snakes gather together in caves, where they hibernate through the winter in tem- peratures close to freezing. I think what throws chills into most people when they see a snake is the forked tongue that comes out and moves and then goes back into the mouth only to appear again, giving the effect that something is going to happen. Well, what is happening is the snake is testing the air with its very sensitive tongue to pick up chemicals that in the wild are used to seek its prey. In other words, by following a trail of chemical sense the snake can find its next meal. When we corner it, it's merely trying to figure out what is going on by moving its tongue and drawing it back into its mouth and then bringing it back out again to pick up the chemical particles in the air. Pretty remarkable. Of course, if you were out west or in some part of upstate New York, you would find poisonous snakes, rat- tlers, water moccasins and cotton- mouth. In some places like Texas they have rattlesnake days or jamborees when people go out to hunt rat- tlesnakes and bring them in to skin them and then eat them. Evidently something like our eels. And being one who appreciates fried eels and smoked eels, I can see that perhaps maybe, just maybe, rattlesnake might be worthy of a try.