Brian Lampkin
When I moved to my current Tarboro neighborhood I asked my neighbor about the frequency of snakes in our yards. He said, “Oh, I’ve been here 30 years and I’ve only seen two snakes.”
It could be that he was just trying to make me and my two-year-olds feel at ease in our new home. Or perhaps that eye twitch of his was a wink to my other neighbor listening in on our conversation, as if to say, “This Yankee’s got a lot to learn about snakes, but we’ll let him learn on his own.”
Either way, I’ve been here four years now and I’ve seen more than two snakes. Many more, oh yes, many, many more.
A “canal” runs through our neighborhood (back home we’d call it a ditch, but “canal” probably improves real estate value) and this waterway is home to a surprising diversity of wildlife. I’ve seen frogs, toads, salamanders, blue herons, osprey and raccoon among other fish and bird species. And I’ve seen snakes. Banded Water Snakes, Redbelly Water Snakes, Garter Snakes and some very impressive black Rat Snakes. I’ve seen Black Racers and Rough-Earth Snakes, but I’ve yet to see a Cottonmouth.
I was walking along the canal with my now six-year-old twins the other day when another neighbor stopped to say, “I killed a big ol’ snake in there yesterday.”
He looked puzzled when I replied, “That’s too bad. I kind of like them.” (Which is kind of a lie – I’m really desperately afraid of them, but more on that later.).
My good neighbor said, “I got nothing agin ’em, but kids go walking in that canal.”
And they do, mine included, and I appreciate my neighbor’s civic-minded action, but is killing every snake you see the reasonable response?
It is certainly a tradition of sorts in Tarboro and many people I meet understand that if you see a snake the normal and expected response is to kill it. Or to run away screaming.
I saw a boy of about 10 last month standing in his yard with a shovel in hand and a severed Redbelly Water Snake underneath its spade. Man, that kid was as proud as a Dinka warrior who’d just killed his first lion, but the difference is that the Redbelly Water Snake is entirely harmless. More than harmless, it’s what we call beneficial.
Redbellies and Rat snakes – really all snakes – do us a great favor. They eat rats and moles and other pesky rodents and they never eat humans. Do Redbellies and Rat snakes bite humans? Only when a human tries to pick one up and even then the bite is moderately painful, but not dangerous. Then why are we so intent on killing them?
Because of that aforementioned and yet to be seen Cottonmouth, and its cousin the Copperhead. These are the two venomous snakes within Tarboro’s town limits (if you don’t count that couple at every school board meeting who complain about every teacher their angelic children have ever had).
Timber Rattlesnakes – sometimes known as Canebrakes – once lived here, but they’re generally understood to be absent from Edgecombe County.
The beautifully patterned Copperhead is quite common and not so long ago a friend’s dog was bitten by one in the Forest Acres neighborhood. She survived, but there are cases where pets have died from a Copperhead bite.
There has only been one documented case in North Carolina history of a person (a two-year-old) dying from a Copperhead bite (but apparently a man in Texas died from a bite in 2006) and the North Carolina Zoological Society points out that more people die each year from cow and pig encounters than all snake encounters.
But still, a Copperhead bite is no joke. It is painful and serious. I have never seen a Copperhead in Tarboro, but I was walking the trails at Indian Lake with a handful of young children when I was given serious pause by an orange and red snake just off the trail. It was a Mole Kingsnake, happily, and it would be a great mistake to kill a Kingsnake of any kind. Kingsnakes often feed on other snakes – especially venomous ones. If only Harper Lee had written “To Kill A Kingsnake,” then we’d treat them with the proper respect.
Should you kill the Copperhead you see in your backyard?
I’m not sure anyone would blame you, and if you call Tarboro Animal Control they’ll probably “put it down” as well (though they’ll bag and relocate Rat Snakes and other harmless snakes). But one thing to keep in mind is that many if not most bites occur from intentional encounters with venomous snakes. We want to keep our pets and children safe and we’ll do what’s necessary to keep them that way, so we kill snakes with hoes and shovels and rocks and sticks and sometimes get bit ourselves.
Recent research from North Carolina State University tries to explain the frequency of Copperhead bites. It turns out that North Carolina leads the nation in the frequency of venomous snake bites (19 per 100,000 people) and 90 percent of those are Copperhead bites. Most other snakes offer a warning of some kind before striking (a rattlesnake’s rattle, for instance), but Copperheads use their strike as a warning instead. Often this strike will be a relatively “dry bite,” which means very little or no venom is injected. Copperheads do not want to waste venom on tasteless non-prey like humans. In any case, approaching a Copperhead is tricky business and accidentally stepping on one is even worse.
OK, so killing a Copperhead in your backyard is one thing, but indiscriminately killing every snake you see is another. Believe me, I’m tempted. My fear of snakes leads me to some ugly places – the five-foot Rat Snake in my front yard during my first year in Tarboro (I could practically hear my neighbors snickering behind their drawn curtains) very nearly met the panicked wheels of my minivan, but my fear is accompanied by a fascination with snakes. It turns out it really is pretty easy to identify a Copperhead from nearly all other snakes (juvenile Copperheads are a little trickier – watch out for a bright yellow tail) and if you can rationally understand that all snakes do us some good and very few can harm us, then the leap to a respectful tolerance off them is not a long one.
Of course, the Cottonmouth complicates things. Next month I’ll talk about the myths and realities of life in the ideal water moccasin habitat that is Eastern North Carolina.
The Nature of Tarboro by Brian Lampkin is a monthly column about wildlife and environmental issues specific to Tarboro and Edgecombe County.
