We Need to Cure Snake Abuse

This has been an interesting day for me contemplating man's relationship with reptiles. Started with an early a.m. reading of the Chronicle in which I learned that some people in Oakland discovered a 4'-long gopher snake in a parking garage at one of the libraries. Panic ensued. Among other things, a "brave" man placed a traffic cone over the coiled snake and summoned other brave men for help in subduing the snake (which, it seems to me, was already subdued). They arrived with a tool of choice, a golf club. The snake, undoubtedly upset by his or her confinement under the cone, rapidly slithered into the wheel well of a car. When one of the brave men tried to pull it out with the club club, the snake wrapped around it. In a panic, the the man flung the snake across the garage. When the snake was finally "captured" comments were made to the effect that the snake was "very strong," "mean," and "obviously wild, not someone's pet."
Contrast this story with the top two images here of my son with a gopher snake of approximately the same size that had been captured a few hours earlier in the "wilderness" behind our school. Click on either image for an enlarged view. I promise that the snake will not escape from your monitor!
I have caught perhaps 100 gopher snakes in my life, on both coasts and points between. Almost every time, if it's a warm day, the snake rattles its tail in the dry leaves and sounds very much like a rattlesnake. Rattlesnakes do this, by the way, only because they don't want to get stepped on by a buffalo or other large, hoofed animal - which you probably resemble. The gopher snake, by practicing this mimicry, gains protection from potential predators or "stompers" that avoid rattlesnakes. On cooler days, they are sluggish and don't even resist being picked up. At any rate, in 100% of cases the snakes have calmed down immediately upon being hand held. Within a few seconds of capture, I let go of the head and let the snake rest on my opened hands, and they crawl around a bit, sometimes wrapping around my arms or even trying to go up a sleeve, but NEVER biting. I hope it is obvious in the top two photos above that my son and the snake are completely relaxed.
So, during my 7:30 a.m. reading, I found myself feeling hostile toward the "brave" men in the Oakland situation and, I confess, probably generalizing to "city folk" and their alienation from nature. In a marvelous coincidence, it turns out I am working this summer as camp naturalist at the Oakland Feather River Camp here in Quincy. This weekend the camp was visited by lots of volunteers from Oakland and vicinity for the annual clean-up. People were raking, painting, and doing all sort of repairs. I spent the morning helping a lady prepare the fire pit for a summer of evening campfires. While moving some firewood I came across a very large blue belly lizard. I caught it and a son of one of the volunteers, a boy of around 12, quickly heard that I had a lizard and came running over. He wanted to hold it and, while I had this reluctant reaction as if he were going to fling the lizard against a tree or something, I relented and was pleased to see that this young fellow was gentle and completely comfortable with the lizard. I showed him features that indicated it was a male "in heat" and when he let it go he might see it do push-ups as a combination of territoriality and attracting a mate. The boy held the lizard for quite a while, and later proudly showed me how it didn't even try to escape when he held it in his open hand. We need more boys like this in the world. He could be a good ambassador for reptiles who really need many.
Back to the Oakland situation. Just as disgusting to me as the maltreatment of the snake was the quote in the sidebar of the article. A security guard is quoted as follows: "It hissed and struck at us. I know I was screaming. Here you had two big black dudes running like hell from a snake." Some security! And why did he mention the guys were black?!
As for the other photos - I just want to show how beautiful these creatures are and point out they are being held gently with open hands. The middle two are my son's pet corn snake, Einstein, whom we call Einie. We take him out on the front lawn for a slither now and then. He very aggressively and quickly captures, suffocates, and swallows the live mice we feed him (which is his nature), but has never struck at us. He crawls around my son's neck, into and out of his shirts, and otherwise just rests without trying to escape.
Picture #5 is of a yellow-bellied racer, AKA green racer, a western subspecies of a snake whose relatives east of the Mississippi are usually black. In California they might fight and strike when picked up, but are harmless and nearly always hand tame immediately after being subdued. That should be apparent in the above photo.
The bottom photo is of a ring-neck snake, one of the prettiest species I've ever seen. They seldom exceed a foot in length and are as gentle as a snake can be. They like worms, slugs, and soft insects, and live mostly under rocks and logs. We have generally kept them for a week or two, fed them, observed them, and let them go where we found them.
A closing anecdote regarding my late, great advanced ecology professor Archie Carr of the University of Florida. Dr. Carr, a world traveler, observed that people in parts of the world that have no snakes, the Arctic for instance, exhibit great discomfort and even fear upon seeing photographs of snakes! Carr speculated that there may exist a genetic basis for instinctively fearing snakes that may have evolved in the human species when it was starting its career in Africa. When people spread to all parts of the world from Africa they may have retained that gene, although it would obviously be useless in a place without snakes. Sort of like the appendix that was probably useful in the distant past. Thus ends my snake story for the day. Be kind to your neighborhood snakes!