If you saw a wiggling mass, would you get close enough to record it?
Chuck Thorn said, “It’s just a thrill for me.”
The friend people call when they have a snake sighting.
Thorn said, “If they find a snake in their backyard, I get a call and say, hey, I need you to get this out of here, and we’ll take it, bring it back to our house, let it go in our woods. No big deal.”
Word of “cottonmouth,” brought anchor Diane Lee and Chuck Thorn together on Social Media.
Thorn called on by friends to identify this visitor to Lee’s backyard this week.
Thorn says it’s no water moccasin, but a non-venomous Northern Water Snake.
Thorn said, “Generally I’m right, I’ve been off on a couple.”
Thorn also mentions that snakes get a bad rap, and non-venomous snakes help keep the rodent population down.
This is the time of year when we’re digging in the garden or walking in the woods and all of a sudden you spot something slithering nearby.
Some like the King Snake even kill the most common venomous snake in the Upstate, Copperheads.
The Facebook post of the snake in Lee’s backyard, showed that she is certainly not the only Upstate homeowner who has noticed an early onset of snakes.
Recently, some folks are noticing a spike in snake sittings.
Why are people seeing more snakes than usual?
Wofford Biologist Dr. John Moeller says the answer could be the warmer winter.
Moeller said, “If their body temperature’s rising at a faster rate and getting up to a higher level earlier, that may speed up some of the processes of gestation, and they may be giving birth at an earlier time.”
There are 38 species of snakes in SC, but in the Upstate only 3 of them are venomous.
Most of them are more of a flight risk, than a bite risk.
However, that’s not to say non-venomous snakes don’t bite if provoked.
Thorn advises, “I would not grab a wild snake like this and just start treating it as though it’s a pet snake.”
He has also been nipped a bit, but he says the biggest sting is when people kill a snake, just because they don’t know the difference.
As far as identifying the type of snake anything with a rattle is venomous those types are usually found the mountain area.
A snake may also be venomous if it has a diamond shape head and also an hour glass design.
Here’s a gallery of photos on our website that lists the snakes found in our area you can use that to identify what you see.HOW TO IDENTIFY SNAKES OF SC, NC & GA
And here’s advice on what to do if you get bitten.What To Do If You’re Bitten by Venomous Snake
