What Can I Do About Snakes in My Backyard?

Learning about the snakes in your yard could help you decide what to do.

Keeping snakes out of your yard is a challenge; dealing with them is not. Because their natural habitat is disappearing, they often have no choice but to enter human-inhabited areas. Snakes play important roles as predators of many unwelcome pests in the ecosystem surrounding your home. The best way to "deal" with snakes is to either let them be or make your yard less appealing to them.

Unappealing Yards

Even stacked stone walls can be a haven for snakes.

If there are snakes around your home, they're finding something appealing about it. You must have aspects that provide shelter or harbor prey. Hiding places for snakes include rock piles, brush piles, stacks of firewood, tall grasses, or areas around a pond or lake near your home. Landscape plants that lay on and cover the ground also provide cover for these often reclusive creatures. Clearing out these features in your yard can aid you in discouraging snakes.

Snake-Proofing Your Home

Holes for pipes may give snakes access to your home.

The snakes that inhabit your yard may occasionally wander into your home or other structures. Shelter and the possibility for food drive the snakes to enter structures. Place weather stripping or door sweeps under your doors -- including your garage door. Plug any holes you may have that may invite snakes. This may include pool drains or where pipes and cables enter your building. You can seal cracks and holes with caulk or expanding foam. Use high-quality mesh for larger holes.

Benefits of Snakes

Snakes are predators and may give you a hand in controlling certain populations.

Snakes are major predators of creatures including insects, small mammals and amphibians. All of these creatures can become nuisances depending on the situation. Insects and small mammals may eat your gardens and landscape; amphibians may terrorize your pond. Because of their predatory qualities, attracting snakes to your yard may be an option. Creating rock and brush piles around your gardens can help you keep your pest populations down. Leaving them be -- not attracting or discouraging them -- is also an option.

Identifying Snakes

The pit is visible on the side of this viper's face.

If you have several different types of snake in your yard, or venomous snakes in your area, learn how to differentiate between potentially dangerous species and harmless species. Most of the venomous snakes in America belong to the Viperidae family. The vipers in North America are all pit vipers, which have small pits between their eyes and nostrils. They also have vertically elliptical eyes, sometimes referred to as "cat eyes," while most other snakes have round pupils. Coral snakes are also venomous but belong to Elapidae, the same family as cobras. Coral snakes are red, yellow and black and are rather small. For coral snakes, remember the rhyme "Red on yellow, kill a fellow; red on black, venom lacks" when looking at the pattern on the snake's body. Some other, nonvenomous snakes also have a matching pattern.

References

• University of Florida IFAS Extension; Dealing With Snakes in Florida's Residential Areas - Preventing Encounters; Steve A. Johnson, et al.; July 2007
• Colorado State University Extension; Coping With Snakes; M. Cerato, et al.; May 2006
• University of Pittsburgh: Snakes of North America

Resources

• University of Georgia: Snakes Identification Guide