A Tale of Two Snakes by Jonathan Crowe
Chorus 18, no. 10 (Dec. 2001)

Two of the snakes we have cared for would have interesting stories to tell. They can’t talk, of course, so I’ll tell their stories for them. Both were snakes that came in from the wild under extraordinary circumstances. It’s amazing that either of them managed to survive. One we have kept, one we have released: when you read their stories, you’ll understand why.

The first snake was found in a head of lettuce in the produce section of a Toronto-area supermarket. He was very small, very frightened, and very pugnacious. He was immediately rescued by local hobbyists who were determined to prevent him from being used by the supermarket as evidence against the suppliers on whose trucks they supposed he arrived — they didn’t expect he would survive long as evidence. All parties presumed that he had arrived on a food shipment from the southern U.S., and on that basis, this small snake with bright burgundy blotches was identified as a Prairie Kingsnake (Lampropeltis calligaster calligaster).

Florence, hearing this story, decided that she wanted to adopt this snake, and the person looking after him was happy to oblige her. So, in early May 2000 I brought him back with me to Ottawa. He was small, still very shy, but not aggressive, and he seemed to be eating well.

But he didn’t look like a Prairie Kingsnake. I knew they were somewhat variable and supposed that he was from a locality with which I was unfamiliar. But, while I wasn’t in a position to second-guess the identification, I was nevertheless not confident about it. I asked some friends who had more expertise with native species, and they were all pretty sure, based in part on the picture accompanying this article, that he was, in fact, an Eastern Milk Snake (Lampropeltis triangulum triangulum), a species native to Ontario that is protected by provincial legislation. Just to be doubly sure, I counted the mid-body scale rows on a shed skin and consulted field guides. Prairie Kingsnakes have between 25 and 27 scale rows; Eastern Milk Snakes have between 19 and 23 rows. This snake has 19 scale rows. He’s an Eastern Milk Snake.

Eastern Milk Snake in summer 2000Eastern Milk Snakes have a reputation among Ontario reptile enthusiasts for being difficult captives that refuse to eat in captivity. Those who have caught wild milk snakes and brought them home have invariably watched them starve to death slowly. This fact alone should discourage anyone from taking one home to keep. (To say nothing of the fact that they’re protected by provincial law.) Leave them in the wild!

As for ours, we applied for and received a licence from the Ministry of Natural Resources. We didn’t know where he came from, and he had been in contact with a lot of domesticated reptiles, so releasing him into the wild was not a viable option. A difference of even a few kilometres could have meant introducing him into a distinct genetic population, thus messing up the natural gene pool. And while he could have come from near the supermarket itself, he could also have come, by truck, from anywhere in the Eastern Milk Snake’s natural range — essentially, anywhere in northeastern North America. So he stayed with us.

Almost as if on cue, once identified as a milk snake, he began to behave like one, and started refusing to eat. In one two-month period he ate only one pinky mouse. We began to worry. Mike Rankin suggested that we provide very dark and secure hiding places and leave him alone when offering food. We gave the milk snake an inverted flower pot with a small hole in the bottom in September 2000, and fed him in there. He began eating again, but every so often he has gone off his feed, with lengthy fasts in February and April of this year. He’s had a very good summer: we’ve been offering multiple pinkies and fuzzies, and he’s been growing very nicely. He’s even started to assume the more brownish colour associated with adult milk snakes. By now he’s doing so well that we refer to him as that rare creature, the milk snake that actually eats. But just to be clear about this: he’s the exception to the rule!

He’s still shy, and seems to be getting more nervous with the onset of fall, and may yet go off his feed again. We’ve grown to expect that, but we don’t worry that he’s going to starve any more.

Our second rescued snake, an adult female Eastern Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis), came to us in the dead of winter. She was turned in at the Ottawa-Carleton Wildlife Centre over the Christmas holidays. If I remember the story correctly, she had been found in a snowbank and had to be more or less thawed out before being turned in. I really wish I had more information about what actually happened. Ken Storey of Carleton University has been studying the ability of reptiles and amphibians to withstand subzero temperature for short (or, in the case of amphibians, extended) periods, but in the case of garter snakes, he says they cannot withstand more than a few days. So my guess is that this snake had been flushed out of her hibernaculum somehow, and was lucky enough to have been discovered soon afterward.

Rescued Eastern Garter SnakeWe were to look after her over the winter — putting her back into hibernation was too risky, since we couldn’t tell if there was any frostbite damage — and release her in the spring. Releasing her was a viable option in this case, as it was not in the case of the Eastern Milk Snake, for two reasons. One, we were reasonably certain of her original locality (somewhere in the western suburbs of Ottawa), and a garter snake’s range is large enough that extreme precision isn’t critical. Two, while provincial law prohibits the release of Eastern Milk Snakes (and other specially protected wildlife) without government authorization, no such restrictions exist for garter snakes.

Our plan was to minimize contact with her and to avoid taming her down while we waited for spring. She was all too willing to oblige us: she was defensive, struck at us, and was generally intimidating — and has anyone noticed that the musk of wild garters is worse than that of captives? She wasn’t the best eater. She never once ate fish with us; we fed her worm-scented mice, with a nightcrawler chaser to whet her appetite (it’s hard to go wrong feeding worms to garters). She would have made a crummy pet. We had to remind ourselves that we wanted it this way: behaviour undesireable in a pet can be an asset in the rough and nasty wild.

Florence releases the garter snakeWe released her on the first weekend in May in the Stony Swamp Conservation Area. My notes record that it was a sunny, windy day, around 14°C. A couple of frogs were calling. She settled in under some leaf litter and quickly disappeared from casual view. If you’re hiking the Beaver Trail and come across a large, somewhat aggressive female garter snake with a badly stumped tail, say hello for us, would you?

Note: This article has not been updated since its first publication. As a result, some of the facts referred to in the text may now be out of date.