Seeing fewer snakes: how to help a frightened neighbor

In this lesson: what actually reduces snake visits to a yard, so you can offer a frightened person a real alternative to killing.

I want to be honest about why this lesson exists. Not everyone who takes this course is going to end up wanting snakes in their yard, and that’s alright. More to the point, you know people who will never take this course at all, and some of them are afraid. When a scared neighbor says “I’ve got to get rid of these snakes,” the choice in front of them is usually between a shovel and a bag of useless repellent. If you can hand them a third option that works, you have just saved a snake, and probably several. That’s what this is for.

Be advised, before we start, that there is no way to ever make the outdoors snake-free. The goal here is fewer visits, not zero, and you should still practice situational awareness no matter what you do.

Start with what doesn’t work

Products that purport themselves as snake repellents do not keep snakes away, and most of them are harmful to the environment, wildlife, and your family. This includes mothballs, sulfur, “snake-away” granules, and ultrasonic devices. Stores sell them because people buy them. Killing the snakes you see doesn’t work either, for the reason given in an earlier lesson: if the yard is attractive, another snake moves in.

What works: take away the reasons to visit

A snake is in a yard for one of three things: food, shelter, or a route to somewhere else. Remove those and the visits drop.

• Cut off the buffet. Snakes go where the mice, rats, frogs, and lizards are. Spilled birdseed, pet food left out, open compost, chicken feed, and brush piles full of rodents are all snake attractants one step removed. Clean up the rodent food and the rodents leave, and the snakes follow them.
• Remove hiding places near the house. Woodpiles stacked against the wall, sheets of tin or plywood lying flat, boards, rock piles, tall grass along the foundation, thick ground cover right up against the steps. Move woodpiles away from the house and up off the ground; store lumber and tin on racks; keep the strip nearest the house mowed and clear. (Understand that this makes the yard less friendly to all small wildlife, which is the tradeoff a frightened person is choosing.)
• Keep a manicured yard, at least in the areas people and pets use most. Short grass gives a snake nowhere to hide and gives you a clear view of the ground.
• Seal the buildings. To keep snakes and other wildlife out of any structure, you must physically preclude entry: gaps in the foundation, siding, and around utility lines, doors that don’t seal, crawlspace vents without screens. Merely removing snakes without precluding their re-entry is pointless.
• Manage water. Leaky spigots, low spots that hold water, and ornamental ponds draw frogs, and frogs draw snakes. A person who wants fewer snakes may want to think twice about a water feature.
• Invite the neighbors’ predators. Hawks and owls eat snakes. A tall perch pole or leaving a dead tree standing (where safe) gives raptors a place to hunt from.
• Snake fencing. For a small area such as a play yard or a chicken run, an exclusion fence works: fine hardware cloth (quarter-inch mesh), about three feet tall, buried several inches into the ground and angled outward at the top. It is real work to install and maintain, but it does what repellents only claim to.

If the land can’t be manicured

Not every property is a suburban lot. On a farm, a ranch, or acreage that is snake habitat by definition, “remove the cover” is not advice anyone can take, and it shouldn’t be; that cover is what the land is for. The useful reframing is fewer snakes where the people are: the strip around the house, the barn doors, the equipment shed, the kids’ play area, the path to the mailbox. Keep those few places mowed, clear, and free of stacked material and spilled feed, seal the buildings, and let the rest of the land be what it is. Situational awareness, and the habits in the previous lesson, do the rest.

How to offer this to someone

The person who asks you how to get rid of snakes doesn’t want a lecture on ecology. They want to feel safe. Meet that first. “I get it; here’s what actually works” opens more doors than “you shouldn’t want that.” Then give them two or three of the items above, not all seven. Woodpile off the house, birdseed cleaned up, grass mowed near the door: that’s usually enough for a suburban yard, and it’s enough for them to feel they’ve done something without anyone having to die.

If it comes up, mention that the snake they saw was very likely harmless and that it was probably eating the mice they’d rather not have. People are often more willing to tolerate a snake once they know it’s on their side.

Take this further

• A sentence that works out loud: “Snakes don’t come for you, they come for the mice. Get rid of what the mice like and the snakes go with them.”
• A wildlife biologist’s version of the same advice: Keeping Snakes Away: Advice from a Wildlife Biologist (Field Ecology).
• Next: Seeing more snakes: a friendlier yard.