The woman’s voice quavered in agitation as she described her predicament.
“I have a milkshake on my driveway,” she squeaked over the phone, her words barely discernible above the squeals emanating from her equally distraught children.
I winced as I listened, thinking back to the time I watched a Superdawg chocolate shake meet a similar fate on a sidewalk in Park Ridge. But before I could commiserate, as well as wonder why the woman was calling a nature center to share her misfortune, she continued with her story.
“It’s been there for almost an hour. I was thinking I’d put it in a fruit jar and bring it to you, but that’s when I thought I’d better call and ask if that’s the right thing to do.”
Remembering my own dairy debacle, I knew the last thing I wanted to do was save the sad remains in a jar, let alone bring them somewhere.
Utterly confused, I was about to suggest the woman just hose away the whole mess. But then she spoke a few more sentences and the details of her dilemma emerged.
“I don’t want it to bite me. And, it’s so little. I’m wondering if it just hatched, and whether there are more around.”
Bing! A light bulb went on. The caller wasn’t describing a milkshake, as in sweet elixir, but rather a milksnake, as in Lampropeltis triangulum triangulum – one of our area’s most colorful, and secretive, snakes.
Decked out in a vibrant mix of black, red and creamy white, the eastern milk snake looks anything but native. Its bold blotches seem far too flamboyant to be included among our region’s herpetofauna, which typically bear more conservative hues of green, black and brown.
If you’ve never been lucky enough to see a wild milksnake, don’t feel too left out – you’re not alone. The species just isn’t that prevalent, at least in Kane County. The common name milksnake comes from the animal’s habit of hanging out around farms, where they do a bang-up job of keeping rodent populations under control. But as farms have ebbed from the local landscape, so too have milksnakes.
The shiny, multihued snakes also are fossorial in nature, which means they spend a lot of time underground. They love hiding beneath rocks and debris, and frequently overtake burrows of critters like ground squirrels and woodchucks. Unless you catch them basking (on, like, say, a driveway) you really have to look hard to find them.
To top it off, milksnakes are prized by collectors. If and when they do appear, they often are snapped up and either sold or kept as pets. This ill-advised, and illegal, practice has hit wild populations hard, especially since the species was never present in great numbers to begin with.
The good news is that there is at least one young milksnake currently enjoying its freedom in the greater St. Charles area. The woman with the snake, not shake, on her driveway agreed to let it stay, happy to hear that it likely will do its part to minimize the mouse “situation” she has in her storage shed.
Also good, for those of you who might like to see a living, breathing milksnake but don’t want to go to the trouble of turning over rocks or reaching down burrows, is that we have one here at Hickory Knolls.
Bred in captivity and donated by a local herpetologist, Mary Milksnake hatched in June of 2011. Today she’s not quite full grown but is robust in size, and attitude. Our friendly and helpful staff would be glad to introduce you. All you have to do is pay us a visit. Come to the front desk and say you’re here to see the milksnake, and chances are good we’ll comply. Unless of course we start to give you directions to Colonial. Or Dairy Queen. Or Oberweis.
Pam Otto is the manager of nature programs and interpretive services at the Hickory Knolls Discovery Center, a facility of the St. Charles Park District. She can be reached at 630-513-4346 or potto@stcparks.org