Garter snake

The first thing most people do when they see a snake in their yard is panic. David Steen would like to suggest an alternative.

"What I like to do is just watch and observe what it’s doing," says Steen, a wildlife ecologist and blogger at Living Alongside Wildlife. "I think watching local wildlife, whether it’s a snake or a bird or any other species, provides a good opportunity to learn about the wildlife surrounding you."

Unlike other wildlife, though, snakes can evoke fear instead of wonder — fear that’s usually misplaced.

Not So Scary

It may be a cliché, but it’s true: Usually a snake is more scared of you than you are of it.

"If you see a snake, it’s not going to crawl up to you and bite you," says Steen. "Think about it from the snake’s perspective. What can it possibly gain from initiating an attack on a predator that’s a hundred times its size?"

And what few people realize is that in the unlikely event that you were bitten, it would probably be no big deal. "I’ve been bitten by hundreds of nonvenomous snakes and suffered no ill effects except a couple of pinpricks of blood," Steen says. In fact, he says, ask any herpetologist and he’ll tell you he’d much rather be bitten by a snake than a mammal — the squirrel bites Steen got while doing wildlife rehab were far more memorable.

Snake bites also don’t transmit disease; for instance, snakes don’t carry rabies. The only thing you might catch from a snake is salmonella, and you’d have to work at it: "If you’re not handling a snake and licking your hands, there’s no way you can get sick by one," he says. And unless you live in Florida where exotics like the Burmese python have become established in the wild, your pets are not at risk from nonvenomous snakes, because the native species aren’t big enough to prey on cats and dogs.

Deadly but Rare

We know what you’re thinking: Fine, but what about the venomous ones? Yes, they’re dangerous, but it’s important to remember they are in the minority. "Worldwide, there are approximately 3,000 species of snakes, and probably less than 400 are venomous," Steen says. Where he works in Georgia, only 6 out of 42 species are venomous; in many parts of the United States, like the northeast and midwest, the percentage is even smaller.

You’re also a lot less likely to actually see venomous snakes because their behavior is different. "Venomous snakes are sit-and-wait predators. Nonvenomous snakes actively look for prey, so you’ll see them more often," he says.

Despite those facts, many people will kill any snake they encounter — Steen knows that partly because they send the photos to his blog for identification afterwards. "It’s a bizarre reaction," he says. "It’s scary to think that people think that way about seeing another creature. What if it was a dog, a cat, or even a cardinal; can you imagine saying ‘kill it?’ The reality is, it’s just another animal."

Keep Calm and Learn Your Species

Even if a snake is dangerous, killing it is the worst way to protect yourself. "The vast majority of snake bites occur when people attempt to capture the snake, grab it and kill it," Steen says. "It’s often a chaotic, panicked event, and that’s dangerous if the snake is venomous."

Instead, he recommends, prepare by learning about the local species — which you do have, even if you live in a city. Some kinds of snakes are good at coexisting with us, mostly by not being seen. "We walk by snakes every day without knowing it," he says. "We only see a very small fraction of the snakes that are out there. So when we do see a snake, it doesn’t mean things all of a sudden got dangerous; it just means that we happened to see that snake."

There are common tricks for recognizing which snakes are venomous, but Steen says that they aren’t as easy as they sound — it can be harder than you think to decide, say, whether a snake’s head is triangular enough, especially when you’re feeling stressed. You’ll be more confident if you recognize the particular species you’re looking at. So get a field guide, do your research and familiarize yourself with your snake neighbors.

"With a little effort, you should be able to learn to identify the six or seven snakes you’re most likely to encounter in your yard pretty confidently, and then you’ll probably be able to identify 90 percent of the snakes you see," he says.

How to Solve a Snake Problem

While most snakes generally pose no danger, as with any other wildlife, you should still keep your distance. If you have a snake in your yard that you can’t live with, venomous or not, call an expert to remove it. Steen says that if you’re concerned about the welfare of the snake, they can sometimes be successfully relocated if you hire a trapper who’s knowledgeable enough to put it in the right habitat.

That’s likely to be a temporary fix, though, because if snakes like the habitat in your yard, more will come. That isn’t necessarily bad: snakes can be good to have around because they eat other creatures that are more of a problem. "Rodents are vectors for Lyme disease — ticks use rodents to transmit it," he says. "Snakes play a lot of important roles in that ecosystem and a lot of those roles can be benefits for people."

Not convinced? Then you need to change what’s attracting the snakes. "I would focus on two things: The snake is either looking for a place to hide, or it’s looking for something to eat," Steen says. "As far as hiding spots, keep your lawn mowed, make sure shrubs don’t reach the ground — trim so there’s a gap between the shrubs and the ground — and keep woodpiles and brush piles away from the house."

Also make sure that your yard isn’t attractive to tasty rodents: Secure the garbage, and recognize that if you’re trying to attract more conventionally appealing wildlife, others may follow. "Something to think about is bird feeders — if there’s a lot of seed being spilled all over the place, that’s going to attract rodents, and that’s going to attract snakes," he says.

Snakes at Home

Even if you appreciate snakes, it can be a different story if they get inside. "I can understand why people might throw their environmental ethic out the window when there’s a snake in the house," Steen says.

The majority of snakes that make their way into homes in the United States are harmless garter or rat snakes looking for rodents to eat — or even bats, so you may find them in your attic. "Rat snakes are exceptional climbers — they eat bats and bird eggs, and that requires them to scale trees," he says.

Again, if you’re comfortable identifying those species, the situation will be much less stressful. If you have them removed and want to keep them from coming back, find openings to the outside of your house (even the smallest ones) and seal them up, the same as if you want to discourage mice or bats. Steen says, "Snakes are pretty tricky because they can squeeze into very small areas."

But one final thing to consider is that snakes are good to have around even if you don’t like them. "Some snakes eat the venomous snakes that people don’t want to have around — king snakes and indigo snakes are famous for eating rattlesnakes and copperheads," he says. "So if you have a whole healthy ecosystem of predators and prey, the benefits outweigh the costs."

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