EPISODE 137 WHERE HAVE ALL OUR SNAKES GONE?
Alan Skeoch
Oct. 9, 2020
Every year of my life I have met snakes in the summer time. Garter snakes especially and the
occasional milk snake. Except this summer. No one has been found staring at me in the
barn or green house. Usually they hide among the thousand flower pots I keep hap hazardly stacked
but not this year.
A snake only scares me when I do not see the creature until I lift a flower pot or move a
tool box. One day a couple of years ago there were a whole bunch of garter snakes in
the green house. Lots of males, smaller than the females, but I was looking in the wrong place.
I should have looked above my head where she was stretched out…maybe just inches from
my head…watching me. See if you can find her here.
How did garter snakes get their name? Because they looked like the garters that men
once wore to hold their socks up? Now who would do that. My socks droop down. Suppose
I wrapped a garter snake around my sock just for fun. Nope. Cannot do that this year.
Once I found a snake in my shoe. Maybe it wanted to be a garter.
Frogs are in short supply. Endangered by disease and the Sixth mass extinciton. With few
frogs there will have to be fewer snakes. Sad bit true.
Our grandson, Jack, is a great snake catcher. He does not kill them…meets them eye to eye.
His dad once said that garter snakes do not bite. That was proved false when he caught a
big one and it latched onto his finger. Most garter snakes are small but one was once found
that was five feet long.
How many garter snakes are found in North America. About one million. I thought there were
more. One year we were visiiing Amherst Island and found garter snake balls in an old house
foundation. Garter snakes all wrapped up together for the winter or maybe they were copulating.
Whups…I should not mention sex I suppose.
Our uncle John Skeoch, Saskatchewan farmer, had to abandon his stone stone house on the
prairies because garter snakes had taken over beginning with the foundation field stone
gaps and ending up in the kitchen coffee cups. Snakes eye to eye with us in the kitchen.
Seemed like more than a million must exist. But that was forty years ago. Today there
seem to be no snakes in our flower pots.
Killing snakes happens. Especially snakes that carry venom that will kill humans. Like rattle snakes. Years ago, Dr. Norm Patterson, geophysicisit, nearly sent
me to Arizona on a mining job. Lots of rattlers down there. So I read a couple of snake books. What should I do if bitten or if a friend got bitten.
“Suck out the blood” Imagine that. How would I suck out the blood of my own leg? How much blood? How could I do that to a fellow worker?
No problem. The next day Norm said he had changed his mind and sent me to Southern Ireland for the summer. There are no snakes
in Ireland. Another crew was sent to Arizona. I said nothing to them about rattle snakes.
We do have rattlesnakes in Ontario They are protected. Our son Andrew has tried to discourage his son Jack from catching Ontario rattlers.
That light green grass snake is startling in colour but invisible in the grass.
Marjorie once caught a big garter snake with an equally large frog halfway down its throat. She pulled out the frog and it hopped away. The
snake was not amused. Why tell you this? Because it is Marjorie’s birthday today. What has her birthday got to do with snakes. Nothing.
Just making the point that Marjorie, our son Andrew and his son Jack love snakes. And that love may save a few snakes from the snake
killers.
alan skeoch
Oct. 9, 2020