How Do You Catch A Snake?

The two orange bells bushes in the back yard are again blooming full tilt. Planted deliberately under my bedroom windows, for both privacy when the shades were up and for the enjoyment of watching hummingbirds flit through them, even when I'm not paying them much attention they bring me joy. Being desert plants, I'm grateful they don't also bring me a hearty water bill, though this ongoing drought does not entirely relieve me of the duty of watering them.

It hadn't occurred to me to note, much less wonder at, the very little bit of cleanup they required around the ground. Obviously, petals drop. Bougainvillea  blossoms drift everywhere, pine needles pile up, stalks from aloes, agaves and yuccas all need trimming back when spent, palm trees are incredibly messy and expensive to trim. I was just too busy to notice what I didn't have to deal with until the day I saw why.

During a very early morning trek to the bathroom, I paused to look out the window. Movement drew my eyes down. There was a Gambel's quail scarfing up a dropped petal, evidently finishing up a meal of several from the previous day. While that was striking enough - Hey, hooray, we have free food for quail in the yard! - it was the manner in which it was consumed that held my attention. Orange bells, for obvious reasons, have long bell-shaped blossoms. Tiny where they attach, they flare out to allow thirsty pollinators in. Primary purpose fulfilled, they are discarded to the whims of gravity and wind. The quail picked up the fallen bell in its bill by the smaller back end, then worked each side of its beak open and forward, alternating sides, until its beak "walked" its way to the end. Swallow. Browse on.

The only other animal I have personally watched eat anything in that manner is a snake. Lots of them, actually. At one time I kept several in cages as pets.With a very few exceptions, I bought them from a St. Paul reptile pet store. The rest I caught.

Some of you are recoiling right now. Whether by instinct or training, most people hate snakes. Slimy! (Not.) Scary! (Well, OK, I'll give ya that on the poisonous ones, unless they're behind glass.) They eat you! (Hmmm, you've been watching that Hollywood movie before bed again?)

I grew up in the northern part of Minnesota, a large swath of territory totally bereft of any kind of poisonous snakes. Moreover, our family owned a resort, and a pair of bored kids found it great fun to test out our skills at catching frogs, toads, salamanders, and best yet, garter snakes. My older brother always did better than I did, but it was still great fun. Frogs made great fish bait, so we weren't totally useless. Sometimes we'd just let the garter snake go and try to catch it again. It was tricky to pounce in front of where we'd last seen it because the tail could be disappearing eastward following the body which had already turned south, east again, west, and have disappeared into the lake before we knew it had moved more than two inches.

Oh, and by the way, for all those of you who think you know what you're talking about but have never bothered to actually check it out, these black snakes with yellow stripes running the length of their body, or sometimes red stripes in California, are g-a-r-t-e-r snakes. Not garden snakes. Not gardener snakes. Garter. Our parents did train us to be too polite to argue with the paying customers, but they never succeeded in training away the annoyance. (Spelled "c-o-n-t-e-m-p-t".)

So how do you catch one? Pretty much any way you can. Grab ahead of whatever moves and hope you picked the right direction it's moving in. Grab hold both gently but firmly. Squeeze too hard: dead snake, or at least broken which means the same thing but takes longer. Don't grab hard enough: wave bye to your escape artist. And be prepared for their great escape trick once you really catch them: they poop liquid crap all over you and it really, really stinks! Seriously nasty!  You might give some consideration to holding it securely at arms length for a minute or so until it's empty, and in the meantime a second hand to grip the other end of the body to control the writhing can assist in preventing it from spraying in all directions, particularly yours.

Note that this is a natural response to its usual predators, which tend to catch the snake in their mouth in order to eat it. Not only the smell, then, but the flavor, help influence the would-be diner that tastier food can be found elsewhere. Of course, I'm just guessing, never having that particular experience. Assuming you, as worst case, only get poop sprayed on your hands and clothing, now that you've caught your snake, do not use that as a reason to let this one go and try for a different one. First, the odds are the second snake will likely react the same way as the first, giving you a double dose. Second, once the odor is on your skin and clothing, it's there for as long as it takes both to become well acquainted with a good dose of soap and water. Perhaps two. Live with it and keep your snake, if that was your goal.

This all pretty much applies to any non-poisonous snake.

You better know the difference. You never want to randomly grab at a poisonous snake. There is a special technique which usually protects the catcher from the catchee, but if those snakes are your goal, go get a proper education from a professional and don't rely on your self-perceived level of holiness to protect you. 'Nuff said?

Knowing a few things about your snake will help you locate one in the first place. Where does it live? What does it eat? How does it like the current temperature?

Going back to garter snakes, they live in the grasses and weeds near bodies of fresh water. Sometimes, actually in the water. The reason for the where is in what they eat. Garters love earthworms, small frogs and toads, and (slow, stupid) minnows. A few seconds thought will clue you into where those can be found. Yes, sometimes that will be a garden, but that does not change the name of this particular snake.

Temperature plays a factor because snakes are cold blooded. In winter they slither deep into a burrow to estivate, the snake version of hybernation. This makes them terrible year-round pets, because most of them seem to need this cycle to survive, and few homes can provide it. Thus, if you've kept one all summer, turn it loose before the leaves drop, somewhere near where you caught it. There will be the proper kinds of tunnels there. In the summer, on a cool morning, snakes will find a sunny warm spot to get their metabolism going, and can often be found on paths or along roadways. In hotter weather, like the rest of us, they seek shade. If you keep one in the house, once  you understand what a genuinely escape-proof cage is, never put their cage in the sun as it will overheat. Dead, stinky snake! Likewise, a warming light or rock can give them an assist when it's cool.

Obviously, if you wish to keep a snake as a pet, you need to do a lot of research and preparation first. You thought hamsters got loose easily? Whoo boy! There are a lot of excellent books out there: read a couple. Find out what your snake is, what it eats and which items on its menu can eat it, how much it will grow if you're damn lucky and smart. Does it climb? Burrow? Hide or hang out in the open? How do you clean its cage without killing it? (No, seriously!) How big a water bowl does it need? Does it prefer a rock or a tree branch to assist it with shedding its skin, and how do you tell if that's happening or it's dying, because if it's the first and you start handling it, it might become the second.

I have strong memories of a few of my snake pets. Garters were my first, for budgetary reasons. I never had to go out and catch a frog, something I'd hate to kill anyway. Worms and minnows are available as fishing bait, and if you can convince the bait shop owner you will happily pay for just a very few minnows of the proper size, you can have some real fun. I used a clear Pyrex bowl as a water source for the two garters I had at the time, perhaps 5" tall and 8" across. Uhh, the bowl, not the snakes. The snakes could drink or soak in it as they chose. When it was feeding time, I dropped a few minnows in the water. There was one issue here, because garters are so incredibly stupid: they couldn't tell my fingers from the  minnows I was dropping. Luckily their teeth aren't really that sharp and rarely did more than a light scratch. Once past that hurdle, however, they instantly zeroed in on the fish and chased them around and around the bowl until they were caught. Nothing else ever made those garters move so fast! Of course, on those days when one of the idiots had gone after me first, I found much humor in it when both latched onto different ends of the same minnow and met nose-to-nose in the middle, having to battle over possession. Sure, there were three or four equally lively and tasty minnows swimming around in the rest of their bowl, but like I said: STUPID!

After their feeding, and with my freshly-washed hands, I changed their bowl to fresh water again, of course. About a week later, the newspaper on the cage floor got changed as well: slow digestion. And my little escape artists were snugly secured during cleaning in a pillowcase with the top securely knotted.

I only ever named one of  my snakes. He or she, I never knew nor cared, was a reticulated python, about 4' long. I called it "Nasty". It well earned the name. It's the only one of over a dozen snakes of about 8 varieties which never ever grew accustomed to handling. It always struck, and at that size, there was a guaranteed scratch requiring soap, water, and a bandaid. Luckily it didn't need frequent attention, because it didn't get it. It also discouraged me from collecting any more.

By then, anyway, my family had moved to Georgia, which had enough poisonous snakes that I didn't want to encourage any of the kids in the idea that it was safe to pick up any they found in the yard. I did, however, take advantage of the offer of a neighbor just up the road, coincidentally who grew up in the same county in Minnesota where the resort was at, to let him bring over the body of a copperhead he had killed in his yard earlier in the day. First, however, I insisted that its head be completely removed, not wanting anyone to risk an accidental fang puncture with a residue of venom. Unlikely, you think, even after showing it as an example of deadly danger? You don't know my boys! At any rate, of all the snakes I'd kept, and there were some beauties, this copperhead was far and away the most beautiful snake I had ever seen in my life!

I did learn one tip down there for driving away those snakes which might decide your warm basement was a good spot to winter. You didn't have to even know if they were there, or might be, so it was great for all those folks afraid of any snakes at all, poisonous or not, i.e., pretty much everybody. All you needed to do was set out a small open container of turpentine in your basement. The fumes drove out all the smart snakes to go hunt for more amenable winter housing. Any that didn't leave, died.

Had I thought about it, I would have known. Any product with a pine tar, any cleaner with a name ending in "-sol", is deadly to snakes. That's why you can never clean your snake cage in, say, Pine-Sol, no matter how wonderful it is for other uses. It's also why, if you must paint part of a snake cage, you can only use latex. The solvents to clean your oil paint brushes leave deadly residue.

Of course, here in Arizona, nobody has basements so I don't need to remember how to keep snakes out of them. Somehow, though, I still do.