Lyn deMartin, founder of Eldorado Snake Relocation Volunteers, holds a snake she recovered from inside a neighbor’s grill. Now that temperatures are rising, she’s about ready to return the snake, named Guinevere, to the neighbor, who will use it to help control rodents. ( Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)
Copyright © 2021 Albuquerque Journal
Lisa Fulton and her husband got quite the surprise when they decided to cook some burgers on the grill one recent warm spring day at their home in Eldorado. When they lifted the lid of the grill for the first time in months, they discovered a four-foot-long bull snake coiled around the heating elements.
“The snake was not interested in moving,” said Fulton, disappointed the couple had to settle for stove-cooked burgers.
Fortunately, they had a neighbor who knew just what to do.
Lyn deMartin heads up Eldorado Snake Relocation Volunteers, a group of about 18 people who help relocate snakes to or from properties in the area.
“She wrangled the snake out of there and put it in a container,” Fulton said.
DeMartin started the group about 10 years ago and it now works through the Wildlife Center in Española to assist in relocating snakes. She’s about to get busy as the variety of snakes found in the area are now coming out of brumation, a state similar to hibernation.
A coachwhip snake, sometimes referred to as a red racer, makes its way through the brush in Eldorado. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)
“Rattlesnakes are out now. They’re a little hardier,” deMartin said, adding that bull snakes, coachwhips – more commonly known as red racers – will be out soon.
The snakes don’t depart their dens until temperatures are consistently above 45 degrees, deMartin says, meaning snakes in these parts are most commonly seen from May to September.
These are some of the facts about snakes deMartin wants people to know and are taught during training sessions, as she tries to recruit others to form volunteer groups in their own communities.
That’s because the volunteers in Eldorado are so wrapped up with relocating snakes in their own area, they’re having a hard time meeting the demand elsewhere. The group works with the New Mexico Wildlife Center in Española, which in the past has referred people to the Eldorado group when they get a call from someone who wants a snake relocated.
Last year, Eldorado Snake Relocation Volunteers relocated 119 snakes, a 37% increase from the year before. Since snakes are only out about 5½ months of the year, that’s more than one relocation ever other day.
Lyn deMartin holds a bull snake she recovered from inside a neighbor’s grill. DeMartin organizes and trains volunteers to help relocate snakes for people in the Eldorado area. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)
“The reason for that is the 285 South corridor is growing like crazy,” she said of the U.S. highway that runs through the Santa Fe suburb. “I never had to restrict it to just Eldorado, but we’re getting so many calls from people who just moved into those areas.”
Not all the newcomers are wildlife savvy, she says. People often forget that they’re the ones moving into wildlife habitat. Coyotes, bobcats and rabbits are common in the area.
A lot of people get creeped out by snakes and don’t understand the important role snakes play mitigating populations of disease-carrying pests, deMartin says.
But she and the other volunteers are happy to educate them.
“We love our snakes. They benefit humans directly because they keep the hantavirus and plague out of here when they eat our mice and pack rats, and gophers. It’s part of the balance of nature,” said deMartin, who has a degree in environmental biology.
While there’s enough to keep the group busy around the Eldorado area alone, deMartin says she’s happy to educate others, provide them with the necessary training to relocate snakes themselves and help them organize their own groups.
“I am able and willing to go out in the other communities and teach them how to set up a program and handle the snakes to become more self-sufficient,” she said. “I’m ready to train them.”
Training is conducted in two parts and usually on two separate days about a week apart.
DeMartin said the first part focuses on what it takes to be a volunteer and covers the situations they many encounter. Such as, what do you do when you find a snake coiled up inside your grill?
It took a little doing for DeMartin to unravel the snake from a hard-to-get-to spot. She kept the bull snake she uncoiled from Fulton’s grill and is fostering it at her home until it gets warm enough to be released back into their yard. Fulton said the snake, which they named Guinevere, will be put on packrat control in a portion of their yard.
Before relocating a snake to a yard, deMartin says the families are vetted to make sure there are no dogs in the yard where the snake will be and no traps or bait boxes. “It’s as intensive as trying to adopt a dog,” she says.
The second part of the training includes identifying the three types of snakes most frequently found around here. The prairie rattlesnake is the only one that’s venomous, and a danger to people and pets. Bull snakes and red racers are nonvenomous, and are good to have around to control rodents.
“People have to be comfortable handling snakes and understand their physiology,” she said, adding that they have to be careful not to damage their internal organs, which can happen if they’re dropped. “Volunteers have to know a lot of stuff.”
There’s little difference in handling venomous and nonvenomous snakes, she said, though gloves, gaiters and larger nets are used with rattlers.
“In 10 years, no one has ever been bit,” she said.
Eldorado Snake Relocation Volunteers is a no-kill organization. Rattlesnakes are relocated far away from where people normally roam.
“Sometimes, people decide, ‘I’m just going to kill this thing.’ And that’s a good way to get bit,” she said.
Mathew Miller, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Center, agreed.
“The best thing to do when you see a snake is to let it alone. It will go on about its business,” he said. “My experience is where a lot of people run afoul with wildlife is when they get too close.”
Miller said the best thing to do is to call a group like Eldorado Snake Relocation Volunteers that knows what it’s doing.
But Miller said people should think twice if they want something other than a rattler removed from their yard.
“Snakes are a huge natural control against rodents, and a lot of snakes, especially the smaller ones, their diet is insects. They keep the pests away, so they are good to have around.”
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