By Mike Isbell
Georgia Extension Service
Volume XXVII |
Why is it that some people lose control and go berserk at the
sight of a harmless
snake?
A good friend of mine discovered one on her front porch as
she and her three
children were going inside. The funny part was that all the
other doors were
locked and there was no way in except through the front
door.
So what does she do? Well, instead of simply taking a stick
and guiding the
snake off the porch (I can all but assure you it was more than
willing to leave),
she locks her screaming kids in a van, runs a good 200 yards
to a neighbor’s
house, comes back with her gun-wielding neighbor who kills the
harmless snake.
My wife is just like her. I found a king snake crossing my
yard when the girls
were little. It was lost and just happened to be wandering
around trying to
figure out which way it should be going.
I caught it and showed it to my daughter (she was 4 at the
time). I let her
pet it and then turned it loose. After all, it was harmless.
Well, my wife didn’t
like it one bit, what with letting her daughter touch that
vicious serpent.
Which just brings me to my point: the fear of snakes is a
learned thing. Kids
learn to be afraid of snakes from their parents. The more you
learn about snakes,
the less there is to fear.
Snakes go wherever there is a suitable habitat and adequate
food. Most people
don’t have suitable habitat and food in their yards to attract
snakes, so they
don’t need anything to keep them away. As it is most of the
time, the snakes
just happen to visit your yard by accident.
But if you’re worried about snakes, among things that will
help keep them away
are keeping the grass cut close and moving the rock garden,
compost heap and
woodpile.
If you do these kinds of things, you lower the odds of
finding a snake in the
yard. But there are no guarantees.
Sometimes a venomous snake comes into an area and presents a
danger to people.
It may need to be killed. Of the 39 species of snakes in
Georgia, though, only
six are venomous.
Most of the time, it’s just a harmless snake — and I might
add, a beneficial
one that, if you learn to identify and leave it alone, would
happily move on
its way to wherever it was going to start with.
A few years ago, my daughter Jordan, who was 9 at the time,
found another king
snake in our front yard. It was about 3 feet long. Again, I
caught it and after
handling it for a few minutes gave it to Jordan, who proudly
and without fear
carried it coiled around her arm to show her friends. I went
into the house.
About 45 minutes later I heard all this screaming coming from
outside. I ran
outside and found out that the snake had bitten Jordan on the
arm and she’d
thrown it down.
Her friends were the ones doing all the screaming. Jordan
quickly asked me
to catch the snake again, which I did, and we walked back to
the house.
On the way, our conversation went like this:
“Jordan, did the snakebite hurt?”
“Nah.”
“Well, if it didn’t hurt, why did you throw it down?”
“Daddy, I’m just a little kid. What do you think a little kid
would do?”
The next day she proudly carried the snake to school and
showed it to five
classes. Jordan’s not afraid of snakes, because she’s learned
not to be.
