Garter Snake
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the common, harmless, striped snake of North America . It is found from Canada to Central America , especially in meadows and about water courses. It varies in color from a light green to a dark olive,--almost black in intensity. It is marked by three stripes, one on the back and one along each side. Not infrequently a narrow row of spots runs along each side of the back stripe. The garter snake attains an extreme length of three feet. It is an active animal. It hunts by day and by night. It glides through the grass almost as fast as a person can walk. It swims readily, but it is a poor climber. It lives on insects, frogs, meadow mice, nestlings, and minnows. Its chief foe is the hawk. When attacked or detained it makes a valiant show of fighting, but has the smallest of teeth, and is as harmless as a frog. The female brings forth twenty to eighty young alive, and is believed on uncertain authority to allow them to run down her throat in time of danger. In the autumn the snakes gather in masses and coil up together in old gopher holes and similar places of retreat where they lie torpid till spring. In the spring or early summer the garter snake splits its old skin loose from the head and crawls out of it as from a sack. In addition to the common species there are at least a score of others, one of which is figured in the Mexican coat of arms. See Snake; Viper
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 description of the animal itself — the three stripes, the live-born broods, the autumn masses coiled in gopher holes — is still accurate, and it was right to call the swallowing of the young folklore "believed on uncertain authority"; that story is now firmly rejected, the frightened young simply scattering into cover. What has changed is that garter snakes are no longer thought "as harmless as a frog": they are now known to produce a mildly toxic saliva, and a chewing bite can cause local swelling in humans, though none is dangerous. The score or so of extra species has grown to roughly three dozen recognised in the genus Thamnophis, and the common garter snake has become one of the best-known cases of evolutionary arms race, having evolved resistance to the tetrodotoxin of the newts it eats in the Pacific Northwest. The communal dens the entry mentions are now a tourist attraction, notably at Narcisse in Manitoba, where tens of thousands emerge each spring.
Written for this edition, 2026.