This week for Flora and Fauna Friday we have the chicken’s bane, the Yellow Rat Snake (Pantherophis alleghaniensis).
The Eastern Rat Snake is one of the most common snakes you’ll encounter in the State. Here on the coast, we have the Yellow morph; the upstate has the Black morph. The Yellow Rat Snake is a large snake often reaching or exceeding five feet in length. Adults are greenish-yellow with four black stripes down the length of their back. Juveniles are gray and blotched with brown. When a Rat Snake detects danger at a distance, it will usually freeze and kink its body like a crinkle-cut French fry, to break up its outline and impersonate a stick. When danger gets too close for comfort they will flee underneath brush if possible or, more often than not, assume a strike position. Here they do their darndest to intimidate, vibrating the tip of their tail in leaf litter to mimic a Rattlesnake and striking at anything that gets in range. Their goal is to bluff and not to outright bite but, despite being a non-venomous constrictor, they will not hesitate to bite the snot out of anyone that accosts them.
Rat Snakes are masters in the art of climbing. They can scale shrubberies, brick walls, and tree bark with ease. They’ll even scale a one-inch pole like it’s nothing. Rat Snakes use this scaly scaling to find their preferred food, bird nests. Rat Snakes love eggs and swallowing them whole. They’re a major predator of our large cavity nesting birds, like Wood Ducks and woodpeckers. They’ll also eat anything else they encounter in a tree cavity including baby birds, adult birds, squirrels, tree frogs, and lizards. Once they get into a nest, they’re almost impossible to remove against their will. However, birds don’t nest year-round. So the bulk of their diet is mice and rats. Rat Snakes are also called Chicken Snakes. This comes from their regular habit of squeezing into coops, sucking eggs, sending the chickens into a tizzy, and waking up the farmer at an ungodly hour. They’re also a hazard to Bluebird boxes and Martin houses around people’s homes. They easily defeating most defenses and drive away nesting birds.
