I found a Northern Brown snake on my lunch hour today. Now, to most herpers this is a rather pedestrian event– certainly not one worthy of entire post being devoted to it. But it wasn’t so much the kind of snake, although this is the first Brown Snake I have seen in the wild in almost two years– while still fairly common in our area, they are secretive. Nor was the snake of terribly impressive size. At most it might have been 10 inches long; I have caught Northern Brown snakes over 15 inches long. The brown snake’s colors are subtle shades of brown, tan, and maybe some peach– they are not overly visually impressive.
So what was so special about this snake? Where it was found.
I live on the edge of a town of over 40 thousand people. There are new restaurants, stores, and other businesses that go up or open seemingly every week– not to mention housing developments. Our horizons are ever expanding.
Nonetheless 4 tenths of a mile from my house, bordered on one side by a stream and the other by several dirt lots which will soon be occupied by new houses, is a small corridor of semi-wooded land. The road in front is heavily travelled by those that work at the stables accross the street and the factory on the other side of the stream as well as those from our end of town seeking a route to the mall with fewer traffic lights. My wife, the lovely Angela, jogged by there just last night (she is getting ready for a marathon!) suspecting no more than most of the motorists who passed.
Yet it was here that, under the flattened remains of an old cardboard box, I made today’s find. The snake did not flee when I lifted its shelter. Possibly momentarily dazzled by the sudden flood of sunlight, it also may not have been “warmed up” for the day yet. Although the air temperature must have been low to mid-eighties, there was still quite a bit of un-evaporated condensation under the cardboard, and the snake made no real attempt to move until I had been holding it for several seconds. The black spots that border the light mid-dorsal stripe in this species were rather indistinct, but the black neck collar and markings above the upper lip were obvious and made identification rather easy. Interestingly, we live in the area of intergrade between the Northern and Midland Brown Snake, yet this particular speciman appeared to be pure Nothern, or at least exhibited no Midland charactaristics that I could make out.
This tiny island of wilderness, as I said, is surrounded by ever-advancing suburban sprawl. While the area is not to the point of appearing futuristically desolate, a la Metropolis, my guess is that this idyllic little tract will soon be cleared and developed. It really is a nice place to put a small park in which the kids that eventually move into the new subdivision could play. Yet within the last year at this very spot I have personally seen two kinds of snake, a turtle, several frogs, a salamader, rabbits, woodchucks, a deer fawn, and even a dead coyote.
It is times when I make such improbable sightings that I feel God has let me in on a secret, or at least given me a little wink. And it is pleasant to me that, despite the ever-advancing borders of our city, my wife and children and I go to sleep each night so close such a spot. At least for now.