TURNERS FALLS — A roomful of preschool-age children and their parents at the Carnegie Library in Turners Falls ooh’d and ah’d when Rae Griffiths from Teaching Creatures in Belchertown took a Western Hognose Snake from a plastic bin.
“This snake might be a little nervous,” she said. “But if it were really nervous, it would be hissing at us. And if it were really, really nervous, it would play dead and wouldn’t smell very good.”
The snake was neither hissing nor seeming to be dead. Griffiths carried it around the room for the kids to touch, telling them to compare its rough-textured skin to the other snakes they had seen so far. Some pulled back nervously from the snake while some wanted to hold it themselves. Most just ran a finger along it.
Griffiths was at the library on Friday for its “Snakes are Super” event, where kids and their parents had an opportunity to learn about a variety of snakes that Griffiths brought.
The Western Hognose, she explained, was named for its broad nose, which the snake uses like a shovel to dig for toads hiding underground. The Hognose’s dark skin works as a camouflage in its western prairie environment, Griffiths explained. The Eastern Hognose snake, which she said is native to the Montague area, is smaller and brighter in color.
Showing them a Sinaloan Milk Snake, Griffiths explained that its coloring, red with bands patterned black-yellow-black, evolved to mimic the poisonous coral snake, which is also found in the deserts of the Southwest and Mexico. That way, she said, birds of prey won’t eat them.
But in case any of the children in attendance on Friday ever find themselves in that area of the world, she taught them a rhyme to tell the two snakes apart by the pattern of their stripes:
“Red touches yellow, kills a fellow; red touches black, venom lack.”