Garden Snakes Are Your Friends
I like snakes. Snakes eat things I don’t like so we tend to get along just fine. I have no rats, mice, overabundance of crickets, leaf hoppers or slugs. What I do have is an indigo snake, rat snakes, crowned snakes, a hognose snake and the pride of my habitat, a king snake. Yesterday I accidentally uncovered a small brown snake Storeria dekayi (that would be the species, not the color) in a pile of leaves and he was pretty unhappy to see me. I however was thrilled to see him. It’s the first time I have seen one on my property. They are a small species which only grows to be 6″-13″ long and since their diet is primarily soft bodied invertebrates, he’ll keep the slug population down for me. A brown snake in the garden is a friend in the garden.
This particular species is frequently killed when misidentified as a juvenile copperhead. From a terrific site, Snakes of Georgia and South Carolina comes the following:
In many suburban areas Brown Snakes are killed when they are mistaken for Copperheads (Agkistrodon contortrix); however, Copperheads have prominent hourglass-shaped bands and have bright yellow tail tips when less than 12 in long.
Please be aware of this if you live in an area with brown snakes. A copperhead juvenile looks very different in comparison to a brown snake but people seem to have difficulty looking past the pattern. If a small snake does not have a yellow tail tip, it is not likely to be a copperhead so please don’t kill it. Here is a young copperhead from another good site, Kentucky Snake Identification:
Also the brown has a typical, narrow non-venomous snake shape to it’s head.
Normally if I find such a creature I leave it be, not bring it into my kitchen for a quick photo shoot but I wanted to show it to the neighborhood kids. After a bit of show and tell, my new friend – and he is my friend, although I was not his at all – was re-released exactly where I found him. We named him Felix which didn’t impress him a whit. Hopefully Felix won’t be disturbed enough to put himself in the relocation program and move to another yard because I’d like him to stick around and provide natural slug control.
My dad found one of these snakes outside while he was raking the leaves.
We weren’t sure what type of snake it was so we googled it and found your website. I just want to thank you for making easy to find information about this snake!
thanks. My son just trapped a brown snake and we thought it might be a juvenile cottonmouth or copperhead. Thanks for the great info. He found it in our garden, of course. So glad to hear we have less to worry about and it might actually help us!
Just saw one of these in my garden, and knowing the good aspects of having snake around,I didn’t want to destroy it. However, I needed to know if it posed a potential hazard to my rather curious canines. Thanks for the info, and particularly the pictures.
Thank you for posting this. Every SC spring we get some nice sized Rat and E. King snakes. They are so large even the kids can’t resist holding them for a picture or two. My wife doesn’t care for them, but she is happy that our kids are cautious but unafraid and she loves having no rodents.
However she always killed these little brown “Copperhead” fellas and had the kids do the same. I hated it, but had no proof they weren’t Coppers. I took several pictures of a little brown today and found this site. Thanks for the proof, and the great copperhead picture.
the first little brown snake I found on my property made me go “errmmm…is that a copperhead?” I’m glad that you don’t kill them now. I have several browns and seriously, I only saw two slugs last summer in my garden. Go little brown snakes, go!
where can i get small garden,grass or garter snakes for outside in a wooded area with pond also looking for skinks and salamanders thanks lee
Snakes do not transfer well. The best you can do is create a good habitat for them and hope they show up. Rock piles are my favorite trick for this.