Creepy, Crawly?

Giant garter snake

Vampires and werewolves may make your skin crawl, but few fanged fiends can raise neck hairs as swiftly as a snake. From Discovery’s Animal Planet to MSNBC.com, these slithery reptiles have scaled their way up many “top 10 most frightening animals” list.

But do they really deserve the bad rap? Of the approximately 3,000 different species of snakes worldwide, only 600 or so deliver a venomous bite, and all strike at people only when cornered, startled or otherwise provoked. And a recent study estimates that for all of North America, fewer than 10 people each year die from snake bites.

But snakes have a good reason to be afraid of humans. The threatened giant garter snake, for example, has disappeared from 98 percent of its former haunts in central California’s San Joaquin Valley because habitat there has been drained and degraded to make room for our homes, farms, roads and more.

Snakes, like the giant garter, play an important role in nature, bringing balance to all different kinds of habitats such as deserts, forests, prairies and waters. Stalking prey from rodents to frogs, termites and birds, some larger serpents, such as pythons, can even devour animals as big as deer.

Unlike Dracula, snakes don’t have a hankering for human blood. So if you want to avoid a close encounter with a snake, just stay away from high grasses, and be careful overturning stones, rocks and logs when you’re hiking or working in your backyard. Your neighborhood snakes will be just as happy to keep their distance as you are!