“Crazy times when snakes don’t get fed,” remarked an acquaintance of ours when we mentioned that the snake feeding program at White Tank Mountain Regional Park was suspended for the duration of the Coronavirus threat. “Don’t worry about the snakes,” I told him. “They’ll be fed on schedule, just not in front of the public.” …
“Snakes don’t make good pets for kids,” Chuck advised a couple as their young son ran a finger across our Rosy Boa’s silky body. “They’re not cuddly. They can be difficult to feed. They don’t like to be handled and you can’t play with them. And they can live longer than a dog or cat, …
“He’s never been on the ground before, has he?” I asked Chuck as he lay our 26-year-old California Kingsnake, Spike, on the floor of our patio. “No, he hasn’t,” said Chuck. “I thought he might like a little vitamin D.” For an animal that might not have passed his sixth birthday in the wild, it …
“There are usually only two reasons a snake will bite,” Chuck tells people. “They bite to protect themselves or to get food.” A visitor to a regional park near us was recently bitten for one of those reasons, even though he likely thought he was doing the right thing. Laced with hiking trails, the park’s …
“Everything has to eat,” we tell kids who express concern watching a snake eat a mouse or a rabbit. “It’s part of nature.” Most of us can relate to cute fuzzy mice or rabbits more than we can relate to slithering reptiles, but it’s important to understand the role that snakes serve in the natural …
“How do you kill a snake?” It was a legitimate question from an older resident of a care center we visited recently with our reptile program. Also in attendance was a group of preschoolers, children of some of the facility’s staff. We were intrigued by the differences in attitudes between the age groups. Preconceived Notions …
“Count the snakes and keep your distance!” a friend warned in an email after we told her our new assignment for biological work on the National Elk Refuge was to survey reptiles, mainly counting the snakes. Unknown to her, the snakes in Jackson Hole are comprised of three non-venomous species. Because one species, the rubber …