Reprinted from my July 22, 2007 column in the Morgantown Dominion Post
I cannot tell you how often I’ve heard this story. "I found a snake in my yard and it was a copperhead, so I killed it." Ninety-five percent of the time that snake was a baby black rat snake, harmless, actually beneficial to have around. But it was killed anyway.
On the 4th of July Tom and Estelle Lombardi invited my wife and I to a neighborhood party they were having at their Lakeview home. They are good friends and their parties are always fun, so Cathy and I gratefully accepted. Local DNR fisheries biologist and snake expert, Frank Jernejcic, was also attending, so eventually the discussion of snakes came up. It almost always does when Frank is around.
One of the guests had seen a copperhead and indicated that killing it was the best option. Frank cringed. I did too. For some reason we have this "urge" to kill a snake ... any snake. There is some innate fear of snakes, I guess because a few are poisonous. Although no one has ever died from a copperhead bite (let me repeat, no one has ever died from a copperhead bite), there have been deaths from rattlesnake bites. So, we just kill snakes.
If you used that logic relative on humans, we’d all be in trouble. Hmmm. Does this sound right? A few humans are killers, so we kill every human we see??? Of course not. Anyway, the copperhead discussion showed that we just aren’t very informed about copperheads, and several folks at the party suggested that I write a column about copperheads, so here goes.
Copperheads are the most common venomous snake in the eastern United States. Adults are brightly patterned with a copper-like color on the head and back. There are dark, chestnut-colored bands across the back and sides that are hour-glass shaped. Young copperheads have the same markings except that they have lemon-yellow tails.
You can identify copperheads by their color and hour-glass shaped patterns on the back, the rust colored head, and their elliptical-shaped eye pupil. Copperheads are not particularly aggressive and most are only one foot to 18 inches long. They are not a particularly long snake. They live in many habitats but prefer areas near streams and lakes. They eat mice, rats, frogs, large insects (they especially like cicadas—locusts), lizards, and on rare occasions will even eat other snakes.
Frank gets lots of calls from people about snakes. He indicated that probably 90 percent of all snakes killed that are supposed copperheads, are actually baby black rat snakes. Black rat snakes are probably the most valuable snake we have, when it comes to eating mice and insects. They are harmless snakes, but your black rat snakes are not black until they become adults.
Although commonly mistaken for each other, babies of these two snake species look different. The black rat babies have black and gray square-shaped blotches, while the copperhead has a series of rusty-brown hour-glass blotches. Even so, people kill baby black rats thinking they are copperheads. Although there is absolutely no need to kill baby copperheads, you can easily distinguish the two species. Baby copperheads have a yellowish lemon colored tail. (If you want to see the difference, go to www.ces.ncsu.edu/gaston/Pests/reptiles/chamo.htm).
As I said, copperheads are not very aggressive, and most times you need to step on one or pick it up to get bitten. They usually only bite when they can’t escape. Though the bite can be painful, with swelling, and numbness, there really is no reason to kill this snake. Just stay away from him. They can probably only strike 8-10 inches at most, so you need to be very close to it to get bitten. If you find one in your yard, and have some fear because your kids play there, then get a long stick and pick it up and move it.
Frank felt that most people are uninformed about copperheads, and that is why I wrote this column. Hopefully it will save some black rat snakes over the next few months, and maybe even a few copperheads.
