{"id":39554,"date":"2022-07-07T16:32:50","date_gmt":"2022-07-07T22:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/snake-season-returns-to-southwest-colorado\/"},"modified":"2022-07-07T22:32:50","modified_gmt":"2022-07-07T22:32:50","slug":"snake-season-returns-to-southwest-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/snake-season-returns-to-southwest-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Snake season returns to Southwest Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A prairie rattlesnake. (Courtesy Colorado Parks and Wildlife)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

It\u2019s summer, which means the state\u2019s snakes are slithering out of their winter shelters to soak up some sun and find food.<\/p>\n

Ryan Conn was hiking on a portion of the Colorado Trail in the Breckenridge area when he came across a \u201cblack mass\u201d on a small bridge over what\u2019s normally wet marshland.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you get a little closer, you see just a bunch of very small snakes, all kind of together,\u201d Conn said. \u201cMy eyes are just like stuck on the ground. So it\u2019s going from like all these pretty yellow dandelions to just this writhing blob on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conn\u2019s experience is fairly common, according to Tina Jackson, a species conservation coordinator for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Colorado is home to 30 snake species, and they vary from the common garter snake to the colorful ringneck snake.<\/p>\n

The good news for hikers is that only three native species are venomous. Those are the western massasauga rattlesnake, the midget faded rattlesnake and the prairie rattlesnake.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll three of those are very obvious in letting you know that they\u2019re venomous,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cSo most snakes you\u2019re gonna see out there on the trail are not something you need to really worry about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Craig
Craig Hammersmith photographed this rattlesnake on a connector trail between Raider Ridge and Horse Gulch in Durango in 2014.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
What hikers should know about snakes on trails<\/div>\n

Odds are, avid hikers will come across a snake at some point during their lives. Jackson said when that happens, there\u2019s no need for alarm.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the time, what you can do is just leave them in the trail and go around, give them plenty of space,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the few times I actually recommend people go off-trail.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jackson said if you want to note what kind of snake it is, there are easy ways to identify whether it\u2019s venomous or not. Because all three of Colorado\u2019s venomous snakes are rattlesnakes, they have a distinct look that\u2019s easy to spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tip I give is look at the tail, because even a baby rattlesnake, a newborn, will have what we call a button that has a tiny little one nub rattle,\u201d she said. \u201cSo their tails never come to a point like a pencil.\u201d<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s say you want to avoid that possibility as much as possible. There\u2019s a science to it.<\/p>\n

Jackson said even though snakes \u2013 like all reptiles \u2013 are coldblooded, that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re always in search of heat. Once temperatures reach the upper 90s, snakes will often retreat into an underground shelter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re actually running a fever, so they need to find a nice, cool place to go,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n

But in the worst-case scenario where a snake bite does occur, it\u2019s crucial that the victim stay calm and seek immediate medical attention.<\/p>\n

Snakes can visit backyards too<\/div>\n

Rattlesnakes also can find their way into backyards, or worse, inside homes.<\/p>\n

Ryan Borgman, owner of Rocky Mountain Rattlesnake Service, said it\u2019s been a slow year for his snake removal business, but he expects calls to pick up soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe normally start seeing rattlesnakes around the 15th of April, when they start to leave the den and our calls start around then. But this year we didn\u2019t start getting calls until the end of May, beginning of June,\u201d Borgman said. \u201cI think that last snowstorm we got was kind of what spurred everything to start moving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Borgman said the most important preventive measure is keeping a tidy, neat yard.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you tend to have a lot of mice that frequent your house, those rattlesnakes are primarily rodent hunters. So that\u2019s attracting rattlesnakes to your property. The other things you can do is keep your lawn mowed short so that they don\u2019t have anywhere to hide in the grass, and (you can) trim up bushes and landscape vegetation so that you can see underneath them,\u201d Borgman said.<\/p>\n

Snakes are important for ecosystems<\/div>\n

Both Jackson and Borgman stressed that people shouldn\u2019t kill snakes. In Colorado, it is only legal to kill a rattlesnake if they pose a threat. All other snakes are nongame wildlife and are protected by law.<\/p>\n

Even outside of the legal ramifications, Jackson said going after a snake is a bad idea. Like all animals, snakes have their spot in the circle of life and are important to local ecosystems.<\/p>\n

\u201cSnakes are great at eating,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cHaving a snake in the area is gonna help with rodent populations. It can also help with a lot of insect populations, and they get eaten by a lot of things bigger than them (like) raptors, hawks, owls, and coyotes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s what to do when you see them on the trail or in your backyard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,658,603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-39554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-hiking","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39554"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=39554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}