Snakes in the garden

When you go wild you must expect the wild to come right along with you! The birds come. The insects come. The rats, gophers and mice come. The frogs, lizards and salamanders come. Last but not least come the SNAKES!

To all the uneducated and in-experienced out there snakes are truly marvelous creatures! There are very few snakes that I have encountered...even the rattlesnake (not encountered here in my garden) that I would find offensive or difficult to deal with! There are a few snakes with a "quick" temper but for the most part they just want to be left alone and to go about their business. Rattlesnakes rattle because they want to tell you that you are about to step on them and that would not be good for either of you! Rattlesnakes are fat, sluggish creatures and have a difficult time getting out of the way! Their venom also allows them to numb rodents enough to eat them. The other more agile but similar looking snake is the Gopher snake. This snake is so powerful that all it need do is wrap a coil or two around its rodent victim or even press its powerful body against its victim in a borrow dug by the likely victim...thus the name of Gopher snake. No need for strong digestive enzymes here to do the work! Yes that is all the rattlesnake has. When it bites the powerful enzymes immediately begin to destroy muscle tissue which in the case of an appropriately sized rodent would render it totally passive for eating in a matter of seconds. If a rattle snake bit a much larger creature it would cause serious damage to the muscle tissue near the bite but not likely to be much worse unless the rattlesnake was something like 8 feet long! Some rattlesnakes have more potent venom than others but for the most part they are not deserving of the bad rap that they have been given!!! I would be more concerned about getting into your car and facing the traffic on the way to and from work each day! There is almost nothing in nature that is more brutal than the way a body can be torn up in the blink of an eye just because someone makes a stupid move on the freeway!

OK noone likes to hear this in this blog when they are looking for more garden magic! It is exactly this kind of contrast in the kind of life that we live that makes the garden become an even more magical and greater learning experience! We begin to understand than nature is NOT our enemy; but is in fact our best friend! It is the things that we do to ourselves in our industrious cities when we have destroyed most of the nature around us just to make the most immediate future full of riches for US! (there is no concern for our children other than some kind of trivial inheritance that would be only a minimal fraction of any present wealth!)

Back to the snakes. Yes...they are truly magnificent creatures! Evolution has done it'self proud! The snakes in my garden have been as follows...some were probablly introduced and some were native:

Gopher Snake- one occurrance

CA King snake- several occurrences. One year there were numerous young. Mostly due to neighborhood releases of captures from the mountains and foothills inland from San Diego.

Striped Racer- native, one occurrance

Coachwhip snake- native, several occurances. One capture to view up close of this truly beautiful snake! Observed them in trees as they are certainly agile climbers! This snake is so fast that you are not even sure you saw it before it was gone!

Night snake- possibly an endangered species. A small very timid snake that has poisonous fangs in the rear of their jaw as opposed to a rattle snake or coral snake. Regretfully in the 20+ years that we have been here I have only seen and captured one! Although poisonous you would literally have to force open it's mouth and hold it on your very little finger (if you even have it) for a substantial period just to get a small amount of poison in! Get over this poison shit!

[Ya know, at this rate I am going to have to do a blog about SPIDERS!!!]

Last but not least is the absolutely handsomely atired Ring-necked snake. If this snake were 10 ft. long instead of 10 in. it would be displayed in a prominant place in all the the zoo's reptile houses! If you have ever seen a King cobra (a relative, believe it or not!) Imagine it with a brilliant orange and red belly with black spots upon the sides! This snake was happening long before Sachs-5th Ave! I hope to have a few pics to substantiate my designer claims!

natureguy, Michael