While moving fire wood, I discovered a huge collection of shed snake skins.
This column appeared in the Recorder and the Gazette on Jan 29 and the Eagle on Feb 01.
It was a Sunday and a big storm was on the way. The morning was fairly calm, but clouds had moved in and there wasn’t much time before the snow started to fall. In a perfect world I could have simply kicked off my shoes and settled in for a quiet winter morning, but we don’t live in a perfect world. Instead, we live in a world that requires firewood to be moved from time to time, and, like it or not, it was time.
Anyone who heats with wood will be familiar with the predictable schedule of moving the wood from one pile to another. Wood gets delivered and must be stacked. In my case, I have a substantial pile against the back of my garage and the wood stacked there takes the full force of the afternoon sun in the summertime. Once the wood has spent a season baking in the summer sun, the wood is ready to be moved into the garage and then, eventually, it is brought into the house and burned. Simple.
Except that I always buy a little more wood than I actually need, and after a couple years I start to face a curious problem. Sometimes, perfectly seasoned wood never makes it into the stove in a given year and the surplus usually remains at the bottom of the pile. New wood gets stacked on top of it and the cycle can repeat. So, I changed things up this year and I started a second pile for the new wood with the intention of using up all of the older wood in the original pile. The result has been interesting.
As the wood is slowly removed I find many curious things. There are mouse nests that appear to be abandoned, but it is quite possible that the owners make a quiet escape before I actually uncover the nests. These structures are about the size of a grapefruit and they are made mostly of plant down. Then there have been times when I uncover wooly bear caterpillars; all curled up and waiting for spring to arrive. However, the most interesting artifacts that I discovered were in the layer of the oldest wood.
Extremely dry and “splintery,” this wood has probably been aging in the woodpile for 3 years. It is premium fuel that will burn hot and fast because of its minimal water content. It has also been home to some of the snakes that live in my yard because the layers are full of old snake skins. I can’t say how old the skins are, nor can I know how many different snakes are represented in this collection, but there were almost a dozen specimens of different sizes.
The snakes responsible for this “litter” were almost certainly Eastern Garter Snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis). As the scientific name suggests, there are many subspecies in the genus and it seems that there are about 35 different variations of garter snakes that science recognizes. The standard garter snake is dark above with three longitudinal lines running parallel to the spine. They have large eyes and yellow scales that cover the ventral side of their bodies. Adult garter snakes can vary in size from 18 to 52 inches in length, but I have never seen one much larger than 24 inches long. Like all snakes, they are predators. This is not a problem for humans, however, because they are not venomous.
The garter snakes in my yard must range widely through the grass in search of prey, but I tend to see lots of snakes in the area of the woodpile for practical reasons. Snakes are heterothermic (an extremely fancy word for cold-blooded) and so they will find places to bask in the sun in order to warm up. What better basking spot than an undisturbed wood pile? There have been days when I find 6-8 snakes all soaking up the heat at the same time.
Another attractive feature provided by a woodpile is the fact that there are plenty of pointy corners and sharp edges that the snakes can use when they want to shed their skins. In order to increase in size, snakes must shed their skins and since they don’t have legs with toes and claws, the shedding of a skin is more difficult for a snake than for a lizard. So, once the old skin is ready to go, the snake finds a place where it can snag the skin on something sharp and then, hopefully, the snagged skin will be anchored and the snake can move forward as its skin is pulled off. Think of taking off a sock so that the neck of the sock is pulled down your ankle, turning inside out in the process. When found, all snake skins are inside out.
One of the longest skins that I found was 14 inches in length and it was not a complete skin. Another skin was perfectly intact and I could easily see the circular scales that had covered the previous owner’s eyes. Some were smaller and then there were a large number of “partials;” fragments of skins that were not intact.
The presence of these animals is a good sign and I am always happy when I see a group of garter snakes basking together. They are able to “communicate” through pheromones and new snakes in the area need only to follow the trails of the locals in order to find the woodpile. There is a also ample food to be found in the network of split wood. Worms, slugs, even baby mice found in those mouse nests are all on the menu for garter snakes. These are the “good guys” who help to control the numbers of smaller animals that might be considered as pests. Whenever I mow the grass I am especially vigilant to go slowly and keep a sharp lookout for my guests. No need to kill anyone accidentally.
The snow eventually began to fall just a couple hours after I took the photo featured in today’s column. The garage was packed to the brim, the woodpile was carefully covered and I was ultimately able to kick off my shoes and relax. Of course, more wood will have to be stacked in the future, but I will attend to the task cheerfully knowing that I am creating a spa for the garter snakes that live in my yard.