A take on local snakes

(Updated September 4, 2013)  There was a story in the Galveston County Daily News two days ago titled "Snakes Turning Up in the Suburbs" about a snake discovery in League City, and the ensuing debate as to the species of the critter. 

This was followed by a blog entry titled "League City's Great Snake Mystery" which generated some humorous responses.

I thought I would follow up with some additional info regarding our local snake population.  World's biggest disclaimer: These are personal anecdotes and observations only.  I'm not an expert on snake behavior; I'm just an avid outdoorswoman who has lived in our area for many years.  Snakes are like many other critters: even if certain behaviors are common species-wide, individual members of the species can behave very differently than the population average.  Don't assume that the general characteristics described here will be true in every case.

First I'd like to say - welcome to the subtropical upper Texas coast!!  Snakes and other reptiles are a part of daily lives around here, and are often found in the suburbs.  They are around us whether or not we actually see them. (Remember the posts I did about the red-tailed hawks and the Swainson's hawk? What do you suppose those guys are eating?). 

Second, here's a run-down of some of the more noteworthy local species:

(1) Water Moccasin.  It's easy to see how this venomous snake got its alternate name, which is "cottonmouth":

This open-mouth behavior is the snake's analog of a middle-finger gesture.  Moccasins typically do not back down or make any attempt to avoid human contact, and that's what makes them dangerous.  They would often rather sit in a human's travel path and fight than slither away before the human gets too close.

This pic was taken on my family's farm which is some distance from Houston, but this snake is also extremely common in our area:

This pic was taken on the lawn of Sylvan Rodriguez Park on the north side of Clear Lake.  You can see he has not yet opened his mouth, but he has assumed the characteristic strike position.  Once again, the moccasin holds its ground despite the size of the adversary, which was me.

It can be almost impossible to tell the difference between moccasins and nonvenomous water snakes (described below), because of natural variations in age, color, and shape.  Sometimes I make the call solely on the basis of behavior:
the more aggressive it is,
the more likely it's a moccasin.  

I was riding my bicycle when I encountered that particular snake, so I had almost no equipment with me.  However, I did not want to simply leave the snake basking on the lawn with so many small children playing in Rodriguez Park.  Therefore, I took the one long-ish item I had with me, which was the bungee cord holding a Kryptonite lock on the frame of my bike, and started whacking the snake with it, to encourage him to move back into the woods.  No dice - all that did was make him even more PO'd at me.  This is an example of just how assertive these guys can be.

(2) Copperhead.  Also venomous, the easily-identified copperheads can be as dumb as moccasins are assertive.  The copperheads I have seen have not been aggressive and really don't seem to want to interact with humans, but at the same time, they don't have the common sense to get the heck out of the way.

I took this pic in nearby Fort Bend County, but I've also seen these in abundance in places like Armand Bayou Nature Center.  In the encounter shown above, the snake seemed thoroughly intimidated, but still it would not turn and flee into the abundant vegetative cover, as many nonvenomous snakes would have done.

(3) Coral snake.  This is one of the most acutely-toxic animals on earth, and a well-placed bite is fatal.  The good news is that their mouths are so small that it's almost impossible for them to set a good bite on a human; a recent Houston Chronicle story reports that only one human death has been attributed to coral snakes in the past 40 years.  It is extremely rare to see a coral snake, and I've only seen one in the 20-odd years I've lived in Texas.  I don't have a photo of that one because it quickly turned and fled, but here's a stock drawing:

(4) Rattle snake.  These are common in our area, especially near the coast (they enjoy sandy soil).  A 2008 news story described a bite suffered by a toddler on Galveston Island.  I have a local friend whose 8-year-old son was bitten by one.  It was not fatal but he did suffer significant scarring on his leg because the venom has a flesh-killing property to it.  Contrary to popular belief, most venomous snake bites are not fatal, as this excerpt from a Texas Department of State Health Services website confirms:

Note:  Rattlesnakes don't always make that stereotypical chica-chica-chica rattle like you hear on TV shows.  Sometimes the sound they make is more like a loud uniform buzz.  If you are outdoors and hear a prolonged buzz that does not quite sound like a cicada, it might not be a cicada! 

There were many amusing sights on Galveston Island during the clean-up following Hurricane Ike in 2008.  In this case, someone decided to include a rattlesnake carcass with a pile of household hazardous waste!

(5) Nonpoisonous species.  There are many, and it can be extremely difficult to tell the difference between venomous and nonvenomous.  The rule is, you do not ever handle a snake unless you are willing to bet your life on it being nonvenomous. 

Chicken snakes are as docile as they are harmless.  They can be surprisingly large - this one is coiled around my arm here so it's length is difficult to perceive, but it was about six feet long.  You can see that the head is not viper-shaped and the pupil of the eye is round rather than slit-shaped - both of these are characteristics of nonvenomous snakes.

Kids are often fascinated by snakes.  Last year during Armand Bayou Nature Center's "Bayou Boil" fundraiser, the staff brought along a few nonvenomous snakes for folks to see and touch.

Water snakes are also nonvenomous and mostly want to run away when they see humans.  This crazy-cropped pic was taken in League City's Heritage Park, an excellent location for seeing local wildlife of all types (and for launching kayaks, which is why I'm wearing an inflatable PFD here).  Two young boys had spotted this water snake on the shore of the park's pond.  You can see that I put on surgical gloves here before picking it up, and that's because we noticed that it was letharic.  Zoonotic diseases are a potential concern when handling wildlife.  It turned out that this guy was likely not diseased, but he did prove to be injured.  I had to cut him loose from discarded fishing line, which is a terrible menace to wild animals of many types.   

Of course, snakes are not the only reptiles that inhabit our area!!  Some of you may remember this locally-famous alligator, who took up residence in 2007 under one of the bridges in the tony Bay Oaks subdivision of north Clear Lake:

It's a crummy cell phone pic but trust me -
she was a BIG Mamma!!!

People can be rather passionate about wildlife around here, as some of the signs posted on the bridge above Big Mamma Alligator attested:

So there you have some scoop on a bit of local slither - happy recreating!
:-)

20130904:  And as one final note, here is a useful infographic summarizing the same type of information presented above.  This continues to be a high-traffic post so I thought I'd add that.