OPINION - Editorial

City serpents

She was approaching her driveway after an early evening walk that offered the most comfortable weather the steamy weekend could muster. That's when she saw the intruder--a thick blackish snake, about four feet long, making its leisurely way across the concrete toward the shrubbery at the side of the house.

As might be expected, she let out a shriek and backed up at an alarming rate. The snake, unperturbed, soon disappeared in the dense thicket of vines between her house and that of the neighbors.

Once she regained her composure, she consulted with those folks next door. After a Google search, they surmised it was probably a speckled king snake, a non-venomous sort averaging 48 inches in length. It likes to bask in the sun and rummage around under rocks and wood piles. Its claim to fame, other than scaring the bejeezus out of passersby, is that it is known for its helpful tendency to eat other snakes, including venomous types, along with small rodents and lizards.

It wasn't the type of snake that distressed our correspondent. It was the fact that, although such snakes tend to avoid humans, it apparently felt right at home in a heavily populated residential area, busy with cars, bicycles, dog walkers, kids, lawnmowers, sprinkler systems, and everything else that's relative to a suburban sort of community.

Turns out that many snakes are adaptable and can live in a variety of habitats, as long as those habitats provide a steady diet--such as insects, rats, mice--along with proximity to gardens and cultivated yards that offer a wide array of edible treats.

Scary though they may be, urban snakes aren't a big threat to residents. According to the Arkansas Department of Health, from 1960 to 2007 only three Arkansas residents died from native snakebites, with all three occurring in the 1960s. Still, they are feared more than any other wildlife species in Arkansas, according to Rebecca McPeake of the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture's Cooperative Extension Service.

Psychologists and animal behavior­ists believe the fear of snakes is a learned behavior. But recent research, according to LiveScience.com, suggests that humans have evolved an innate tendency to sense snakes (and spiders) and to learn to fear them--an ability that helped our human ancestors survive in the wild.

"This feeling is really common," says Vanessa LoBue, a psychology professor at Rutgers. "We don't see snakes all the time. There's really no reason for this overwhelming disgust or hatred of snakes."

Yet there it is.

Editorial on 06/23/2018

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