I love garter snakes so much, this one was curious and friendly and slid right across my leg after telescoping a bit for me to take a photo.
Makes me sad to think this snake won't be able to understand how much I appreciated hanging out with them
I live close to some big farm fields and during the summer these fields are just teeming with garters. When i was a kid id run the fields, catch a few and try to feed them crickets i caught. Ive probably yoinked a few hundred of them and never been bit. They’re extremely docile. Even somewhat tolerant of rough handling, without biting.
Kinda jealous tbh, snakes don't really like the acidic pine soil around my house so I don't interact with them super often
Common garter snake, Thamnophis sirtalis. They are probably the most docile snake I've ever come across in the wild, but they are mildly venomous. Now, for clarity, they don't have fangs, so to get envenomated by this snake you'd have to piss them off enough for them to latch onto you, and work the venom into you over the course of about 20 minutes of squeezing it out from between their teeth.
And even if you did get envenomated it would be enough to cause some swelling and not much more
Cool, thanks for the info! They seem really chill, how nice :)
