Looked out the kitchen window in early afternoon the other day and found this guy:
Eastern rat snakes (Pantherophis quadrivittatus) are excellent climbers, not even hesitating to scale virtually any kind of tree in search of birds’ nests (for eggs, nestlings, or adults); a friend insists that one was regularly shinnying up a perfectly smooth, 6-inch square pole at least five meters to reach her marlin houses, which I would have liked to have seen, but that means that brick walls like ours, especially with deep mortar spaces, are a piece of cake. Note that this one wasn’t going fast, but it wasn’t struggling either.
The first two shots were with the (urk!) smutphone, simply because I wanted to ensure I had a few pics in case the snake wasn’t there when I returned with the real camera, so I ask you to please excuse the gaucheness. And from the size and coloration, this might indeed be the same one seen earlier this year (and who was again spotted in the yard a few days after this.) Roughly a meter in length, and this close approach didn’t spook it particularly, though it was watching warily and could easily have dropped to the ground if it felt too threatened – this was only at eye-level, and the snake appeared to be descending from the roof edge, a single story at that point.
Now I’m back with the real camera, and we can see the progress that it’s made; I checked, and none of the bricks from the first frame seem to be found in this one, and I can tell you it was roughly a meter lower on the wall. It took me maybe two minutes to get the camera.
This view is useful in that you can see how much of the snake’s body is out over open air – their muscle control, maintaining leverage on the minimal surfaces of the bricks that they can get onto and in-between, is phenomenal. Moreover, they then ripple this leverage down along their body to slither down the wall. I should have done video, but that would have been best with the tripod and the snake probably wouldn’t have waited around for me to set up.
I let this one be after this, because it’s welcome on the property and quite harmless (to humans, anyway.) Their principle diet is their namesake small rodents like rats and mice, as well as birds and eggs (which are indeed swallowed whole and crushed within their body,) and occasionally other snakes. I imagine it has no issues finding food around here. While roughly the same length as the red-bellied water snake found just over a week ago, it’s distinctly slimmer, less than half the girth, but this is simply a trait of their respective body shapes and not indicative of their eating habits or anything.