S-s-s-snake week!

it's snake season and we have a quiz, plus thoughts and advice

Think fast! You’re on a walk and you see a snake! Not a twisty stick or vine but a s-s-s-snake!

What do you do?

A. Run screaming, back to your house! Stay inside for the rest of the day. Maybe play some video games.

B. Get a shovel and chop its head off!

C. Don’t chop its head off, crazy! That will make more snakes! Obviously you should shoot it.

D. Call animal control. Tell them they need to get here NOW to catch. This. Snake!

E. Try to play with it. It’s not every day you see a snake. Now you have a cool new pet. Treat it like a baby and cradle it in your arms.

F. Slowly and quietly back away. Continue on the rest of your walk, looking down at your feet and near fallen logs and stumps to be on alert for other snakes. P.S. Don’t bother the snakes.

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Which answer did you choose? If you picked F., you are right! Snakes are an important part of our ecosystem, and when you’re walking in the woods, along a stream, or in meadows and parks, you are in their home. Although it’s understandable to be afraid, most snakes are not interested in hurting you. They would rather go about their business than interact with a human.

Still, it’s a good idea to take precautions during snake season (April to October where we live). Wear boots and jeans tucked into them if you’re on a hike in the woods (this also protects against ticks!), or at least closed-toe shoes and tall socks. Keep on the lookout for snakes, which tend to hang out near stumps and logs, and in fallen leaves. Keep your distance if you see one.

Here are some cool facts we learned about snakes:

Snakes are limbless reptiles. They breathe with lungs, and have dry, scaly skin. Many—but not all—snakes lay eggs. Rattlesnakes are an example of a kind of snake that is ovoviparous, or non-egg-laying. That means means they hatch their eggs inside the mother’s body, and are born at a later stage of development.

Here is a cool, informative video showing a western diamondback rattlesnake giving birth!

Snakes shed the outer layer of their skin all at once because it’s worn-out or doesn’t fit. They can do this as often as once a month (like a kid outgrowing shoes!), but more often just a few times a year. Read more about ecdysis, or skin shedding, here.

All snakes are carnivores. This makes them an important part of the food chain. Without snakes, we’d be overrun with mice and rats. (Hey! says Julius, our mouse-hunting cat. What about me? Julius, try as you might, you cannot control our whole mouse population. We need snakes for that.)

As part of the food chain, snakes are also prey for larger animals, including mammals, bald eagles, and even other snakes! They keep everything in balance.

One way things things go out of balance, as we saw last week in Raleigh, is when people keep non-native snakes as pets. This is a bad idea for many reasons!

Snakes are very good at hiding and escaping. They are even better at this when you take them outside to show them off to your friends and Tiktok followers… but we digress! Last week a neighborhood in Northwest Raleigh experienced a lot of avoidable fear and trouble when a zebra cobra escaped.

What was a venomous zebra cobra doing in Raleigh, you ask? Good question! Here is Bea’s answer: “Zebra cobras are not native to North Carolina, or even North America. They are from Africa. Some guy thought it was a good idea to have non-native snakes as pets… venomous snakes. Zebra cobras don’t really bite, but they spit their venom into your eye, and it can kill you. This guy showed videos of his zebra cobra outside. Snakes are very good at climbing and squeezing through small spaces. As you can see, a zebra cobra in a neighborhood causes total chaos! It was a really bad idea.”

Non-native snakes and other reptiles, kept as pets, are more than dangerous to humans and their pets. They’re also really bad for the ecosystem. They threaten biodiversity and because they don’t have natural predators, they can become really populous. Then they compete with mammals, birds, and other reptiles for food—and sometimes they win. In South Florida, in the Everglades National Park, non-native Burmese pythons have effectively killed off a number of mammals, including marsh rabbits, opossums, raccoons, foxes, and even bobcats. Where did these pythons come from? People foolishly breeding them and keeping them as pets!

North Carolina is, unfortunately, one of the states that allow people to keep non-native venomous snakes as pets. Under law, they must be labeled and kept in an escape-proof enclosure. But, as Bea says, this law does not work because snakes are really good at climbing and great at hiding, squeezing through small spaces, and finding escape holes.

South Carolina is currently debating a new law that would prevent the sale of non-native venomous snakes, and ban future ownership of such snakes. This seems sensible to us!

What do you think we should do about dangerous non-native pets?

More on the native snakes of North Carolina, including some tips on identifying our native venomous snakes, on Thursday.

In the meantime, we’d love to hear your s-s-s-snake s-s-s-stories!