Post by Rick (Admin) on May 9, 2013 19:41:09 GMT -5
Rattler spotted along creek
Is there a clutch of Massasauga rattlers in North Bay?
John Jensen is convinced there is. He said he almost stepped on one Tuesday along Chippewa Creek near Chippewa Secondary School.
“Before I could catch it, it scooted off into the rocks,” Jensen, who studied herpetology in university, said Wednesday.
Jensen was walking along the creek at about 4 p.m. Tuesday picking fiddlehead ferns when he saw the snake.
“I’ve seen them before,” Jensen said.
“It had a nice little patch it was basking in when I came along. I guess it noticed me, its head came up, then it turned and scurried away.
Jensen, who breeds ball pythons – “I’m not too afraid of snakes,” he says – said he saw the snake clearly.
His concern, he said, is that he spotted the snake near the Kinsmen Trail along Chippewa Creek, an area frequented by many young people.
“There’s a lot of bike traffic, a lot of foot traffic,” he said. “A lot of kids like to play along the shoreline in that area.”
He said the snake he saw was about a metre long.
“They don’t usually grow over three feet,” Jensen said. “Their usual range is two to three feet.
“This was a good-sized one, so it was probably a parent. That means there could be a clutch of other snakes there.”
Brian Tayler, chief administrative officer at the North Bay-Mattawa Conservation Authority, said he hasn’t received any reports of Massasauga rattlers in the area, but said it would be “quite the discovery.
“This is outside of their range by a fair amount,” Tayler said, suggesting it could be an eastern milk snake, which “looks somewhat like a rattlesnake.”
Jensen disagreed.
“It was definitely a rattler,” he said. “I saw the rattle on the end.”
The Massasauga rattler is listed as a threatened species in Ontario. Its normal range is the Bruce Peninsula and the eastern side of Georgian Bay, while small, isolated populations are reported in the Niagara peninsula and the Windsor area.
www.nugget.ca/2013/05/09/rattler-spotted-along-creek