HABITS OF THE GARTER SNAKE. 485 



HABITS OF THE GARTER SNAKE. 



By ALFRED GOLDSBOROUGII MAYER. 



WITH DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOE. 



AMONG those many creatures which know our fields and 

 forests for their homes, is the little garter snake ; or, as 

 naturalists would have us dub him, Eutcenia sirtalis. If one 

 will but overcome a deep-rooted antipathy to crawling things, 

 and will exchange the city's heat and turmoil for a few weeks of 

 outing in the pure air of our sweet-scented fields, and make our 

 little friend's acquaintance, much that the observer will not will- 

 ingly forget will be his reward. When the snake is full grown, 

 it is usually a little less than three feet long. The color is very 

 variable, the usual body hues being brownish olive, sometimes 

 with darker patches upon the sides, and generally there is a 

 lighter yellowish streak down the middle of the back. 



The belly plates are greenish blue or yellow, and the tongue 

 is bright red, tipped with jet black. When angry, the snake 

 spreads out its easily movable ribs, so as to make itself as broad 

 and ugly as possible, and then one sees patches of white flecks 

 between the scales on the sides. The general effect of the mark- 

 ings is so much like that of the ground upon which the reptile is 

 crawling that even an observant naturalist rarely sees anything 

 of his snakeship until he finds him almost under foot. All snakes 

 crawl by side twists, and not by up and down undulations. They 

 move themselves along by taking advantage of the friction be- 

 tween the sharp edges of the abdominal plates and the ground. 

 The numerous ribs which can be moved forward and backward, 

 as well as up and down, aid them greatly in their progress ; and 

 all the movements are performed with such gliding grace that 

 one imagines the serpent to be impelled onward by some hidden, 

 mysterious force. Place the 

 snake upon a smooth glass sur- 

 face, however, and it writhes 

 and squirms in a helpless fash- 

 ion. The garter snake is an ex- 

 cellent swimmer, making rapid FlG i._ Head of Garteb Snake. 

 progress through the water by 



means of a rhythmical sinusoidal movement of the submerged 

 body, the little head being always just above the surface. It is a 

 lazy creature, possessed of little desire to see the world, for it 

 rarely wanders far from the place of its birth, as long as food re- 

 mains abundant. It loves the sunny borders of swamps and ponds, 

 where frogs and earthworms abound, and where it may bask ex- 



