Operation: Serpent Rescue

I had some guys come and haul off a bunch of brush and tree limbs that I had cut around the yard today.  In the process, they found some old bird netting in my yard that a red-sided garter snake had gotten caught in.  They weren’t impressed, but I actually like snakes and couldn’t stand to see him suffer and die as he was terribly wound up and constricted by this tight net.  While garter snakes can bite to defend themselves, they aren’t venomous and this one was so worn out (likely from struggling), that he was quite content to let me work on freeing him. I’m sure he sensed that I was trying to help and not hurt.

After a good thirty minutes of cutting the worst of it off, three links remained around his torso that were very tight, even inhibiting him from breathing easily.  My neighbor, a retired dentist, came to the rescue with a dental instrument that was perfect for getting between the snake’s skin and the net.  As soon as he was free of the last link, he scurried away as fast as he could.  He might be hard to see in the pictures, but he had beautiful coloring. (P.S. ~ if you wonder which snakes are poisonous in Missouri and which aren’t, the venomous types have vertical slits for pupils, while non-poisonous varieties have full, round pupils.)

Garter Snake - Rescued