By RICK BORCHELT
Photo Credit: Rick Borchelt
Spring is the time we’re almost certainly to see snakes within the D.C. suburbs; hotter temperatures lure them out of their winter shelter to take pleasure in sunny spots, regulating their physique temperature as they put together to mate. Of the species we’re more likely to see right here, black snakes are essentially the most generally noticed.
But saying “black snake” is like saying “red bird”; that fowl might be a cardinal, a home finch, a scarlet tanager — or every other fowl with purple in its plumage. Similarly, saying “black snake” may counsel both of two frequent, however very totally different, snakes which can be, certainly, typically black: the japanese rat snake and the japanese racer.
There’s a saying amongst herpetologists (individuals who examine reptiles and amphibians) that for those who see a snake in a really unusual place, it’s in all probability a rat snake. Rat snakes are members of the genus Pantherophis, which incorporates about 10 North American species additionally generally often called corn snakes and fox snakes. The species we’re more likely to see right here is the japanese rat snake (Pantherophis alleghaniensis).
Plenty of folklore has grown up round japanese rat snakes, which may vary in shade from black to grey to yellow throughout their vary east of the Appalachians. They’re recognized for raiding hen coops, going after birds and eggs alike — incomes them the identify hen snake. They’re additionally known as pilot snakes within the perception that they lead different snakes (together with venomous copperheads and rattlesnakes) to communal winter dens.
Black rat snakes are equally at home on the bottom and in timber; rat snakes have scales which can be keeled — every scale has a ridge — and the keeled scales may help the snake navigate and climb tough surfaces. But climbing just isn’t with out peril: More than a number of black snakes have shimmied up a utility pole, clambered into {an electrical} transformer and shorted it out, with deadly penalties for the snake. They’re additionally adept at entering into attics and ceilings, and are a significant predator of young squirrels and birds of their nests.
Eastern rat snakes are the longest of our snakes within the Mid-Atlantic, topping out at about seven toes. A snake that lengthy is fairly old; they don’t even attain sexual maturity till they’re about 4.
The different black snake we generally see right here within the spring is the japanese (or American) racer (Coluber constrictor). At first look, racers may simply be mistaken for an japanese rat snake.
Side by facet, although, bodily variations between these two black snakes develop into extra obvious. Where rat snakes have keeled scales, racers are very easy, which helps them slip simply by brush and grass. Rat snakes often look chunky, the place racers are skinny and streamlined. In cross part, rat snakes are form of loaf-shaped, whereas racers are tubular. Racers find yourself a bit of shorter at maturity, round 5 toes lengthy.
Most individuals see the most important distinction between these snakes of their faces, even at a distance. Eastern rat snakes have vertical black stripes throughout their lips, the place the lips of racers are plain white.
Even although racers have constrictor as their species identify, rat snakes are usually the precise constrictors: They wrap their catch in muscular coils and suffocate it to loss of life earlier than swallowing it complete. In distinction, racers merely pin down and swallow their still-living meals. This means rat snakes can take bigger prey than racers sometimes do. Neither species is venomous, and neither can chew its meals, however each forms of snake can unhinge their jaws to swallow seemingly impossibly massive prey. But that’s the place the behavioral similarities finish.
Rat snakes are often fairly docile and might typically be picked up and dealt with with out getting agitated and biting you. Racers, alternatively, are nervous snakes with a mood; they’ll strike repeatedly at you if they’re cornered, and whereas they aren’t venomous, their chunk can draw blood. Racers additionally vibrate the information of their tails when alarmed, rendering an affordable facsimile of a rattlesnake’s rattle after they’re vibrating in dry leaves or grass. (This unlucky behavior typically will get them killed by uninformed individuals.) Racers additionally have a tendency to maneuver by their panorama with heads held excessive like a periscope for higher imaginative and prescient.
Snakes in our space enter brumation through the winter, a deep torpor from which snakes can emerge any time the temperature is excessive sufficient for them to bask within the weak winter sunshine. Rat snakes specifically may select your basement or attic for brumation, wrapping themselves round heat pipes or gentle bulbs or wedging into furnaces or water heaters. They’ll sometimes depart within the spring the identical method they got here in. Or a nervous neighbor calls me to maneuver their scaly subletter alongside.
Have questions for Rick in regards to the world of nature in and across the metropolis, or strategies for future columns? Drop him a word at [email protected].
