Proper identification key to safety, for humans and snakes
What would you do when faced with a hissing or rattling snake outside your door? Kill it? That’s not a good idea, according to experts at Sonoma County Reptile Rescue.
Gopher snakes are out and socializing during July and August, because it’s their mating season. Often they get mistaken for rattlesnakes and killed because they shake their tail as a defense mechanism, but with a closer look you’ll notice they don’t have rattles. Even if the specimen is a rattlesnake, the Rescue stresses the importance that all snakes have in nature, and offers free snake removal services for those who don’t wish to have any on their property.
“Gopher snakes are perfectly harmless snakes, you can walk right up to them,” said Laurie Osborne, Education Coordinator at the Reptile Rescue. “If they bit you it would be like a bad paper cut, it’s not anything medically significant, so we try to have people leave them on their property. If they’re totally afraid of snakes, then we’ll bring them back to the rescue and relocate them. And the same goes for rattlesnakes, if the rattlesnake’s getting into a property where people have dogs or little kids and they’re worried about either kids or pets getting bitten, then we relocate their rattlesnakes.”
Osborne has nine years of experience working with snakes, and collaborates with educational programs like Classroom Safari to help teach people the usefulness of snakes and how to distinguish between them.
If a caller tells the Rescue what area they live in, the snake experts can usually say right away if the snake is a rattlesnake or not – areas of north county including Healdsburg are more likely to have rattlers.
“There’s a lot of places in this county where we don’t have rattlesnakes,” said Al Wolf, director of Reptile Rescue. “For instance, if you drive north up 101 from the Sonoma County line north, on the west side we almost don’t have any rattlesnakes … Now once you go to the east side, you get to Sonoma Mountain all the way up as you get into Windsor and Healdsburg, you’ll get rattlesnakes.”
According to Live Science, rattlesnakes have hinged fangs, a triangular head, vertical pupils, range from one to eight feet long and are often patterned with dark shapes like diamonds, hexagons or rhombuses on a lighter colored background. They have live births instead of laying eggs. They are diurnal snakes, but can be more active at night in the summertime.
“I think (rattlesnakes) definitely can be dangerous, a rattlesnake bite is no fun,” said Eve Navarro, vivarium manager at the Isis Oasis Sanctuary in Geyserville. “But I definitely think they’ve gotten a bad rap. They’re not out to harm us, but some people think they are – they don’t want us to mess with them, so they have ways to keep that from happening. They don’t want us in their world at all, we’re too big to eat, so we might just be a predator. Just like any other animal, they’re just living their lives, being themselves.”
Navarro says rattlesnakes are important. “Though we might not necessarily want them under our porch for the sake of our children and our pets, they are needed in the world,” she said. “If it’s a gopher snake, killing it is a tragedy because they also kill rodents, and they also live under our porch. It’s instinctual to kill them, and that’s a mistake … That’s why I have four gopher snakes in the vivarium at this point because I want people to understand, to recognize them and not kill them. They’re beautiful and they have wonderful personalities.”
Navarro has only seen one rattlesnake in Geyserville, which someone brought to her. “I’m sure they’re around, but it’s not necessarily ideal rattlesnake territory,” she said. “They like nooks and crannies, they like it nice and hot.” She has encountered them on the mountains, but only one in the forest over a four-year time span.
Rattlesnakes can be dangerous, but the chance of dying from a bite is extremely low, thanks to modern medicine.
“Poison Control used to say about six people died a year out of about 10,000 bites from venomous snakes, but in reality it’s less than one a year,” Wolf said. “I always tell people: Google how many people die in the United States from venomous snake bites each year.”
Wolf asks callers to either take a picture on their phone and send it to him via text message, or describe it over the phone if they’re too afraid to get close and take a photo. “I tell people, if you see the snake, run inside and call me,” he said. “So often by the time you go back outside, the snake’s not there. What snakes do really well, is they hide. And there’s a good chance that if they come out, I won’t find it, because they don’t like seeing you, either.”
Gopher snakes are typically longer than rattlesnakes, but can be between three and eight feet of length. They have large heads with narrow necks, rounded pupils, usually with two dark lines on their faces from the top of the head to around the eyes. Their coloring often has dark spots along the backs with smaller spots on the sides. When threatened they adopt a defensive posture similar to a rattlesnake, flatten their heads, hiss loudly and vibrate their tails in what’s called Batesian mimicry.
“Everything’s part of an ecosystem,” Wolf said. “You get rid of snakes, you lose something else. And a lot of snakes are really good to have around, part of it shows you’ve got a healthy property and there’s no reason to kill them. Do you kill all the birds outside because you don’t like them?”
According to Wolf, a fishing license from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is required to catch rattlesnakes, but there is still an upper limit. “Killing them, they don’t frown on that because it’s technically a dangerous animal and that’s understood,” he said.
“But when there’s a service like mine, really at no cost … If you at least keep an eye on it, we’ll come out, most calls we’re about a half hour away on, we get them and we have ranchers that actually request them (for rodent control).”
He says that snakes are misunderstood, and are often safer than other animals. If you see one, just step back. “There’s snakes that specialize in eating slugs, there’s snakes that eat lizards and mice, there’s ones that eat certain types of insects and soft-bodied animals,” Wolf said. “Somebody taught us all to be afraid of snakes, in reality snakes are generally the one animal that don’t hurt people. Even if it rattles at you or hisses at you, so what? Trap a raccoon and see what it does. I tell people, you can’t pet a fox, you can’t pet a raccoon, you can’t pet a deer, you can’t pet a squirrel, but often with a snake, we’ll go pick it up and move it and it won’t do anything.”
The Sonoma County Reptile Rescue offers its services for free, but donations are appreciated. For more information, visit www.sonomacountyreptilerescue.com. The emergency number is 321-0504.
