Some days are better than others.
While this phrase holds true with most things in life, it is definitely true for herping. Looking for reptiles can have some pretty extreme highs and lows. Today, Ben and I went out to road cruise for snakes. If you aren't familiar with road cruising, it consists of carefully driving roads in good habitat, looking for reptiles that may be crossing the road. Often this is done at night, but in the fall in Ohio, snakes like to come out onto the roads as they warm up after a cool night. This opens up all the opportunities for them to be killed by vehicles, both accidentally, and intentionally. So we road cruise in the fall, not only to see some really cool critters, but to hopefully save the lives of some of them that may not otherwise have a chance.
Today was rough. Although we found an astonishing 77 snakes total in about 4.5 hours, we only had a 55% success rate. Today we found LOTS of dead snakes. The area we selected is home to 3 species of endangered snakes. Often, we don't see any of the three, but today, we found 5 endangered Kirtland's Snakes (Clonophis kirtlandii) and unfortunately all 5 were dead. Some were flattened and had been there for a while, but several may have been saved if we had gone yesterday too. We found 16 Eastern Garter Snakes... dead. 10 Dekay's Brown Snakes... dead. Red-bellied Snake? Dead. Northern Water Snakes... yep, also dead. Perhaps, the most crushing moment of the day was towards the end of the afternoon, when I was already feeling tired and ready to go home as we cruised one final road. I pulled a live Dekay's off the road on my side of the car while Ben mentioned that I might not want to see what was on his side. I went to see what he found, and he was right. I did not want to see my lifer Smooth Green Snake (Opheodrys vernalis) with fresh fatal wounds. Perhaps if we had cruised that stretch of road even an hour prior I might have ended the day with a huge victory rather than immediate sadness.
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| A Kirtland's Snake (Clonophis kirtlandii) that I found in 2014. |
Sometimes it is difficult for me to see past the dead snakes and enjoy the day, but I try hard to see the bright side. A 55% success rate means that 42 of the snakes we found were saved from the road! Although the lows were extremely low with endangered species and life snakes, if felt great to see so many live snakes slithering into the grass OFF the road! As we cruised along slowly on gravel roads, we would stop for any snake and many sticks that looked a bit snake-like. In some areas, I would get out and walk along the road while Ben followed in my Prius. One of my best finds while I was walking was this very young Red-bellied Snake (Storeria occipitomaculata)... one of my favorites!
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| Red-bellied Snake |
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| Red-bellied Snake |
Diversity of the living snakes was low, but individual counts were high! We found 19 Dekay's Brown Snakes (Storeria dekayi) ranging from 5-13" long. Here are a few of the cute little snakes:
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| Dekay's Brown Snake |
We also encouraged 21 Eastern Garter Snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis) from the road. Immediately after my defeat in seeing the Green Snake, I spotted a live snake in the road. We stopped and I jumped out, exclaiming that it looked dark. Once I got close enough to see, it was all black! Melanistic Garter Snakes aren't common, and especially not in this region of Ohio. This little one was especially beautiful and unique since it had a pink chin. Melanism is essentially the opposite of albino. Melanistic animals have an excess of the dark pigment, Melanin. Moving this gorgeous animal far from the road was definitely a highlight of the day.
Eastern Garter Snakes vary a lot in color and pattern. Check out a few of today's finds!
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| Melanistic Eastern Garter Snake |
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| Melanistic Eastern Garter Snake |
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| Eastern Garter Snake |
In all it was a good day to be out helping the wildlife!
