How to Care for Injured Garden Snakes

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Tim Cole with Austin Reptile Service and I've been keeping reptiles and amphibians for over forty years. We're here to address the question of dealing with an injured garter snake. I can only assume that would probably happen when somebody who is out weed-eating and mowing the yard and accidentally hurt this harmless snake. The one I'm holding is a checkered garter snake and you can see where they get their name by the checkerboard pattern. If they've got a skin laceration that's not too serious you could probably maintain them for a short amount of time in a dry cage on newspaper or paper towels. Give them a place to hide. Give them a water bowl they can get into. You can feed them goldfish or minnows and give them a couple of weeks to recuperate before you release them back into the wild and they'll probably be okay. If it's anything more serious than that I would encourage you to take it to a veterinarian and have them look at it and see if something else needs to be done. Snakes are pretty tough and they can usually survive some pretty rough treatment when they're out in the field."