It’s always fun to discover something new in nature. My latest new find was an Eastern Foxsnake.
Jill and I were doing some birdwatching from her car in a marsh at the beginning of September when she casually asked, “Is that a snake?” I thought she was joking at first.
How could I have missed it? It was over 3 feet long and was slowly slithering in front of Jill’s parked car. In my defense, all my senses were focused on finding birds in the trees.
I snapped a few photos of the snake from the car. Then I got out for a closer look. Before I got too close Jill called after me, “I would appreciate it if you would let me look it up to make sure it’s not poisonous first!”
Hmmm, great point.
We do have rattlesnakes in Wisconsin. In fact a friend of ours recently encountered one at a state park in our area. But this snake had no rattle.
Thankfully there are so many ways to get instant ID information in the field these days, so we quickly knew what kind of snake it was and that it wasn’t poisonous or dangerous.
Foxsnakes give off a musky smell when threatened which is how they got their name. The musk smells similar to a Red Fox. They are also known to rattle their tails in dry leaves to mimic a rattlesnake.
They mainly eat rodents and ground-nesting birds. Foxsnakes constrict their prey and then swallow it whole, head first thanks to an unhinged jaw.
It was a chilly day for late summer, and our new friend decided that lying on the gravel road was a good way to warm up. We were afraid it would get run over by a vehicle, so we tried to coax it along without alarming it and triggering the musk smell. Foxsnakes don’t “spray” musk like a skunk, but when they do release that defense mechanism, the smell can definitely be detected nearby.
I got pretty close to it, but it didn’t seem interested in moving across the road. After about a minute of talking to it and making “shoo” motions to no avail, Jill suggested we get back in the car. I snapped a few more photos and we did just that. About 30 seconds later the snake started moving verrrrrry slowly toward the other side of the road.
We didn’t see him on our return trip to that section of the marsh, so hopefully he found a much safer place to bask in the sun!