By Geraldine Brooks
Early this year, when I told people I was building a hibernaculum, the most common first reaction was, “What’s that?” When I explained that it was a winter residence for snakes, the next response veered from a quizzical, “Why on earth would you do that?” to an emphatic, “I will never visit you again.”
Credit: Simon Letch
It turned out that ophidiophobia – an extreme and overwhelming fear of snakes – is pretty common among my friendship group. I learnt that half of the population is afraid of snakes and, in 3 per cent, the phobia meets the diagnostic criteria for an anxiety disorder.
I went ahead and built it anyway. Anyone can love a panda. I have a soft spot for less charismatic species. If snakes have a small, yet enthusiastic fan base, I am part of it. I am, I suppose, an ophidiophile.
Where I live, on the island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, our seven known species are all harmless to humans. And yet they are in trouble because of humans’ visceral loathing, as well as habitat loss brought about by the proliferation of paved roadways.
Snakes can’t regulate their body temperature as humans and horses do by sweating or shivering or, as dogs do, by panting. In cold climates, they need to get below the frost line in winter to survive. They often do that by finding their way into the basements of houses. Many people take a dim view of this and those snakes end up dead on the ends of shovels and pitchforks. A hibernaculum is one way to help them out.
Catholicism and Judaism, the two religions I know best, don’t agree on much. But they do agree on this: despair is the gravest sin. So what’s that got to do with snakes? I can’t stop the melting permafrost, the bleaching reefs, the shrinking ice sheets, the burning Amazon – the despair inducing litany of destruction that screams from the headlines every single day. But I can give my local snakes a chance.
The Vineyard’s biggest snake is the black racer, a glossy fellow maybe two metres in length. These are increasingly rare. I have seen only one in the 18 years I’ve lived here. She was over-wintering in the warmth of my compost heap and took exception and moved out when I inadvertently disturbed her in early spring. It’s too bad, since she dines on rats and the white-footed mouse that carries Lyme disease, and would have helped me keep that population in check around my horse stalls.
Black racers love sunny uplands and thrived early last century when islanders cleared land here for sheep farming. But as sheep farming declined and the woodlands regenerated, the habitat became less favourable. As roads crisscrossed their territory, they would make the mistake of basking on the warm bitumen and get run over, all too often intentionally.
Our most common snake is the garter, a sinuous thread of beautifully patterned scales in a neutral, grey-brown palette, small and inconspicuous in the leaf litter. These I see quite often. My favourite snake is a resident of my natural swimming pool. She’s a ribbon snake, a mighty swimmer, about 18 centimetres long the last time I encountered her hunting frogs among the flag iris and mallow flowers. She’s a bit bigger than that now; I found her shed skin rattling around a bulrush stem last winter.
It’s little enough. One tiny gesture. But it was what I could do, right here and right now.
I haven’t been lucky enough to see our prettiest species, the milk snake, whose colours vary but who can be identified by the black edge around its saddle patterns. Neither have I seen a yellow-necklace ringneck, or the vivid chartreuse of our smooth green snake, or a flash of the bright underside of a red-bellied snake.
As winter approaches, I’m hoping one of these colourful critters might take up residence in my hibernaculum. I got the idea for my snake house from a program on the island called Natural Neighbours.
While more than a third of the island is in conservation, that’s not enough to protect biodiversity. Plants and animals need connected habitats and only through thoughtful stewardship of private land can we accomplish that.
Natural Neighbours sent a biologist to identify native species already present on my place and to make suggestions on how to enhance habitat to help them thrive. “How about a hibernaculum?” was one of her suggestions and, a few weeks later, a backhoe was digging out a sloping trench, filling the deepest part with Besser Blocks (roomy holes where snakes can curl up below the winter-frozen topsoil) and a piece of PVC pipe to allow reptilian access. On the top we laid nice flat local stones, so the whole thing looks like a rock garden and the snakes will have a warm place to bask when they emerge next spring.
It’s little enough. One tiny gesture. But it was what I could do, right here and right now. If we all, together, do that tiny thing, it might amount to something bigger. And I plan to keep looking. To keep doing what I can.
As Rabbi Nachman said two centuries ago: “If you believe it is possible to destroy, believe it is possible to repair.”
Geraldine Brooks’ latest novel, Horse (Hachette Australia, $40), was published in June.
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