Queen Snakes Are Back, and They’re in New Jersey

[Homebody]

The reptiles, an endangered species, hadn’t been seen in the state since the 1970s.

By James Barron
New York Times
April 30, 2024, 5:01 a.m. ET

Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll meet a creature that you might not want to encounter face-to-scaly-face.


Credit...Jeff Dragon

It’s a slithery, picky eater that craves crayfish — and isn’t much to look at.

“It’s drab and brownish-looking,” Jeff Dragon said. “It’s not going to stand out.”

He was talking about a queen snake.

Dragon, who studies snakes as a research scientist with the New Jersey Pinelands Commission, noticed a specimen last month — the first queen snake known to have been seen in New Jersey since 1977.
The thought of snakes may make you recoil, but queen snakes are not poisonous. They are an endangered species in New York and are listed as critically imperiled by NatureServe, a nonprofit organization that assembles data on species and ecosystems.

Dragon had been on the lookout for queen snakes in South Jersey — he will not say exactly where to keep the area from being overrun with snake hunters — since 2021, when he got a text from a friend’s brother: “I think I have a queen snake in my basement.”

“I was impressed that he took the time to differentiate that it was not a common garter snake or a water snake,” recalled Dragon, who had been out looking for — what else? — other snakes. “For a nonreptile person to find a snake and identify it, that’s impressive.”

He was more impressed when the friend’s brother sent along a photograph. Dragon rushed out of the woods, the better to find even a one-bar cell signal, but by then the man had let the snake go. Dragon went to his house anyway, hoping to come across the snake nearby.

“Failed,” said Dragon, who was puzzled. “They only eat crayfish, and here it was in a basement” with nothing delectable. “Could it have been brought in? ”

Dragon searched the area in the spring of 2022. “Failed again,” he said.

But in August of that year, the man called and said there was a dead female queen snake in the mud room of his house. Dragon theorized that the man’s cat had caught the snake and brought it to the house. He even wondered if the cat had chased down the first snake, only to have it get away and slink to safety in the basement.

Last year came and went with nothing to report. Then, a couple of weeks ago, the friend’s brother called.

“As soon as his name comes on my phone, I go, ‘He’s got one,’” Dragon said. A dead one, it turned out. “It was right in front of his garage door, implying it had been presented as a present by his cat.”

Dragon was convinced: “There is absolutely a population here,” he said.

And not far away, he found a live one. “They like to keep coiled in the shrubs above the water, and right there, bam, as soon as I saw it was coiled, I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed it off the branch and knew immediately this was 100 percent an adult female queen snake.”

He played down the idea that there had been no queen snakes in New Jersey since Jimmy Carter was president and “Star Wars” was playing in theaters for the first time. “They’ve been here all along,” he said. “They’ve just gone undetected.”

[Nutriaitch]

It’s a slithery, picky eater that craves crayfish — and isn’t much to look at.

sounds like my mother in law

[Bogertophis]

The reptiles, an endangered species, hadn’t been seen in the state since the 1970s....

Hey, this is SO cool! Now if everyone would keep the cats inside where they belong...

sounds like my mother in law