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Pssst! There’s a SNAKE in the garden!

© Barbara M. Martin

If you are as nervous around snakes as I am, you will truly appreciate this utterly practical article about Finding Escaped Snakes in the House, by Melissa Kaplan. Print this article out and tape it inside the broom closet or basement door, or wherever you keep useful information like this at your house.

This treasure of information is just a small part of Melissa Kaplan's Amazing Herp Care. Her world includes extensive information on keeping assorted herps as pets, and tons of stuff for educators who want to keep them in the classroom, and lots of other really practical and useful information.

But let's think about this: If you didn't keep it, it wouldn't be escaped now would it. She sort of talks about that, too. Excellent, excellent site.

So as long as you're not keeping them in the house or at school, you should probably only encounter them indoors at the zoo. Keeping them is what herpetoculturists do. Herpewhat? (Herpetoculture explained in a nutshell.) All you ever wanted to know ... and then some!

Zoos I can understand. But snakes as pets?

Be honest. Does this sound like evaluating any other kind of new pet?

"Unless a snake has been handled a lot by a number of different people, it will not be particularly tame when you first pick it up or when it is first handed to you. The snake should move purposefully and persistently; let it move from hand to hand. A wild or highly stressed snake is going to wave the upper half of its body in the air trying to escape as soon as it is free of your hands. When the snake is comfortable with you, it will spend some time wrapped around your hand or arm, actively interested in its surroundings as evidenced by tongue flicking and alert to movement. When you first hold the snake, feel along its entire length to see if you can feel any bumps, lumps or unusually hard or soft areas. When you put the snake down, check your hands to see if there are any mites. Look at the snake move to see that it is moving smoothly, with no abrupt hitches in gait or tremors." (from Melissa Kaplan -- on Kingsnakes and Milksnakes).

Melissa again, this time on handling garters:

"Garters not being kept as breeders may be handled and, with continued exposure, will calm down and take an interest in their

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