Battle of the Species: The Annual Encounter

As we were packing out last night, Mary called me outside.  She said, "One of your little ring-necked snakes is on the brick terrace."  I couldn't resist, so I went right out there to check it out.

There are a couple of reasons this was an interesting event.  First, it was already dark, and we'd never seen one of these snakes at night.  For readers that aren't familiar with this small, benign reptile, we see them around the yard from time to time, a couple of times a year. 

In fact, the first snake I saw on our property was one, it was small, less than a foot long.  Later I captured this photo of one of them with a wrist watch (actually Chris's Suunto) near it for a perspective on their size. 

I knew we had some large toads that hang out on the terrace at night, so I was thinking, "Gees, one of the toads could make a meal of a ring-necked snake!" 

Nope, what Mary had seen was too large to be a ring-neck; however, it was nonvenomous and it was also a very young reptile.  In this case it was a black rat snake.  When I first saw it was on the terrace, I startled it, and it crawled towards the door.  I went back inside to get the lantern, where Mary said, "Just keep that thing out of my house!"

Armed with the lantern, I went back to the spot where I'd last seen the snake.  It wasn't on the ground anymore - in it's search for an escape route, it had gone vertical.  That's lesson number two about black rat snakes: they're climbers.  (Lesson number one:  they are nonvenomous, and actually beneficial from the standpoint of the various pests they eat.)

For a moment I watched it inching its way straight up the stone wall...obviously taking time for a phone cam shot or two.  Then I disturbed it from the climb, first causing it to turn horizontal for some climbing in that direction, and then I knocked it to the terrace.

We see a juvenile black rat snake every year, approximately at this time, coinciding with the anniversary of buying the house.  It's a coincidence, with shorter daylight periods and cooler night time temperatures already happening, I'm sure that the sightings are because they are on the move, hunting during the last salad days of the year.

When I knocked the snake down from the wall, it immediately crawled back towards the wall and the door...so I swept it up again, off into the garden.  I heard it land in the hostas about ten feet away.  Maybe it will stay out there - I'll bet the pickin's are good for a snake in that part of the yard.