New York State’s largest and potentially most dangerous native snake seems to enjoy hanging out in the yard of a man from the Southern Tier town of Hancock, in Delaware County.
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation police officers (ECOs) have made five separate trips to the man’s house over the past several weeks to remove timber rattlesnakes coiled up in the landscaping.
The first call came on July 22, when the Hancock man reported a timber rattlesnake near his front door. An ECO and a member of DEC’s Division of Law Enforcement Wildlife Response Team safely removed the snake.
The ECO returned to the same house on a weekly basis after that, removing four more rattlesnakes, including a possible mating pair. He also removed a five-foot-long timber rattler from the deck of a home in the town of Deposit, not far from Hancock.
All the snakes were relocated back into the wild.
Timber rattlesnakes typically mate from late summer into the fall. They are venomous pit vipers and a threatened species protected by state law. They seldom display aggression unless defending themselves.
DEC reminds the public to leave snakes alone, observe them from a safe distance, and call ECOs or DEC’s Division of Fish and Wildlife for assistance with removal.
The following reports are excerpted from DEC:
An ECO rescued a sick bald eagle on July 25 that was sitting 50 feet up a tree at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Graycliff in the hamlet of Derby. The eagle could barely lift its head, and its wings drooped over branches. Using a ladder truck from a local fire department, the ECO safely retrieved the eagle and handed it over to a wildlife rehabilitator from Messenger Woods.
ECOs working with the New York City Police Department on July 27 charged a shop owner in Lower Manhattan with a criminal misdemeanor for unlawful sale of crocodile meat without a state permit required for selling alligator, crocodile, and caiman products. Officers seized the crocodile meat, and the shop owner faces a fine of up to $5,000.
A fawn got stuck in the foundation of an abandoned building on July 11 in the village of Monticello. The foundation was partially filled with water, making the fawn’s escape more difficult. ECOs retrieved the fawn, determined it was in good health, and released it into the woods where it quickly reunited with an adult deer waiting nearby.
An Orange County resident was ticketed for killing a blue heron in May after a neighbor heard gunshots and called police. ECOs found the dead heron near a pond with gunshot injuries, and in clear line of sight to the shooter’s house. The shooter admitted to shooting the bird, a protected species.
A bunch of ducklings got stuck in a storm drain at an apartment complex in Ronkonkoma on July 12. An ECO saw a hen mallard with one duckling wandering around the parking lot near the storm drain and could hear the other ducklings chirping inside the drain. The ECO and two volunteers removed the drain cover and retrieved the ducklings using a net, reuniting them with the hen mallard waiting at a nearby pond.
A peregrine falcon was injured on June 29 on Manhattan’s East Side. An ECO went to the 50th floor rooftop area of the building and found the bird unable to fly. He safely captured the falcon and transported it to the Wild Bird Fund in New York City for further examination.
At midnight on Aug. 2, a person reported a large boa constrictor in a vacant house in Erie County. An ECO helped local police capture the snake and take it to an animal hospital for evaluation. A reptile rescue group will find the boa constrictor a new home.
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Steve Featherstone covers the outdoors for The Post Standard, syracuse.com and NYUP.com. Contact him at sfeatherstone@syracuse.com or on Twitter @featheroutdoors. You can also follow along with all of our outdoors content at newyorkupstate.com/outdoors/ or follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/upstatenyoutdoor
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