Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Rattlesnakes Should Become Extinct

Audrey Hudson reports yet another land-grabbing ploy: listing the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake as a valuable endangered species.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=51600

There are just a few species that would never be missed if they did become extinct. Dog and deer ticks are two of them. Tiger mosquitoes are another one. Rattlesnakes are another one. Copperheads, which slither around silently, pretending to be blacksnakes, are even more extinction-worthy than rattlesnakes, who at least usually give fair warning before they bite...but corn snakes and king snakes are capable of taking over the venomous snakes' rodent-eating position in the ecology of the Eastern States.

Even if our federal government is corrupt enough to accept the demented idea that rattlesnakes need to be "protected" from human property owners, however, all is not lost. There is one creature on Earth that really knows how to love a rattlesnake. That is a king snake. Immune to the rattlesnake's venom, the king snake swallows it right away and appreciates it for a few weeks before going out to look for another meal.

I grew up hearing that the best thing for rattlesnakes was a blacksnake. Looking up these valuable, if not lovable, animals online, I find that they are classified as a sub-species of king snake. In most of Virginia they're rare. Locally they seem to have been selectively bred into the dominant sub-species, because fear of copperheads caused people to kill any dark-colored mottled snake on sight, resulting in whole families of blacksnakes who are solid blackish grey above and pearl-grey below.

I've talked to people from eastern Virginia who said, "Blacksnakes will mate with copperheads or rattlesnakes." In the case of copperheads this belief may reflect mistaken identity; some copperheads are almost solid black above. Few people care to get close enough to inspect the shape of the head and positively identify a copperhead.

However, when they're talking about a real blacksnake, this belief reflects confusion about the behavior they've observed. Snakes' lack of appendages limits their behavioral options, but blacksnakes don't snuggle their full lengths alongside inferior snakes and wriggle pleasurably, nor do they bite their mates' heads. So it's fairly easy for a non-phobic observer to determine that what blacksnakes actually do with venomous snakes is eat them.

If you live with or near a blacksnake, give thanks--you will probably never have to worry about killing a rattlesnake, or a copperhead for that matter.

If you don't, try to attract some other sort of king snake. Force yourself to look at it enough that you'll recognize it as different from inferior snake species. You won't have to look at a king snake very much. They like lots of personal space, don't live in families, and usually keep out of large animals' way.

If Gulegi, my housemate for forty years, is typical, even your pets will have nothing to fear from a king snake. They have a very keen sense of smell--they use it to locate one another when they're ready to mate, although humans can't smell king snakes at all. They use this sense of smell to go after inferior snakes as their first choice of food, followed by rodents. They will eat other small animals, including baby chickens or infant kittens, if they're hungry, but not when they can easily get pest species that might also attack pets.

I chose this screen name in honor of the computer center where I started writing for the Internet, not in honor of king snakes. But the more I learn about these animals, the more I think they deserve honor from humans.

No comments:

Post a Comment