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Old 08-24-2006, 09:52 PM   #1
Nero557
Fight is on to save snakes in a house.

Later this month, dozens of fox snakes will begin slithering toward an old house in Lake Villa Township. They'll glide through holes in the foundation, coil up inside cement blocks or lie on joists on the basement ceiling and snooze until spring.

The owners have long tolerated this annual scene, reminiscent of something Indiana Jones would confront in one of his adventures. But rapid urbanization in the area means the house could very well be sold and torn down, leaving the snakes nowhere to go to keep from freezing.

"One good bulldozer would destroy the whole population," said Michael Corn, a herpetologist who has spent 10 years studying the approximately 200 snakes that visit the house. He says it's time the reptiles stop being squatters and start being homeowners.

Corn, the retired dean of the biology department at the College of Lake County, is working with environmental groups to raise enough money to essentially buy the house for the snakes.

No one knows for sure how long the non-poisonous snakes have holed up in the house on Grand Avenue near Gurnee. But Corn said that a previous owner coexisted with them for years.

He first learned of the snake house about 13 years ago. A woman who runs a business in a nearby house saw a fox snake in her office and called Corn. He removed it and let it loose near the Des Plaines River.

In the next two weeks, the woman came across at least a dozen more fox snakes in her office and kept calling Corn to get rid of them, until her husband sealed the house with foam.

Corn figured that the snakes had crawled out of the nearby Fourth Lake Fen, owned by the Lake County Forest Preserve District, and he wondered if a nearby house might also harbor them. So he asked the elderly woman who lived there if she had ever seen snakes indoors.

"She said they'd been coming there for years and years," Corn said. "They didn't bother her."

She told Corn that she occasionally called her son for help when a snake wrapped itself around a mixing bowl in her kitchen cupboard.

In 1996, the woman who lived in the house went into a nursing home, and an Antioch couple bought the house with plans to rent it. Corn saw an opportunity to study fox snakes.



Intensive fieldwork

Sandie Cosner, a biology assistant at the college, moved into the house. She and Corn measured and released more than 250 snakes that came inside. They marked the adults with passive integrated transponders the size of a rice grain, which allowed them to use a wand to identify specific snakes as they hibernated.

"It turns out they're in the house most of the year," said Cosner, who lived there from 1996 to 2002.

One mystery Corn attempted to solve is how the snakes know to congregate in one place.

Cosner observed that she saw the longest snakes arrive first, in August. By October, the smallest snakes, which had hatched in the spring, had come in for the winter. Corn theorizes that the oldest snakes remember where to go, and they leave a chemical scent trail for the young snakes to follow.

In winter, snakes need a cold place that doesn't freeze because they're coldblooded. That's why they choose the house's basement concrete blocks or its crawl space for their den, Corn said. Cosner also found snakes in the attic in the spring. She and Corn speculate that the snakes were warming themselves.

"They're such nice snakes," Corn said, describing them as "friendly." They grow as long as 4 feet, often are found in wet prairies and prey on rodents by constricting them. The snakes, which are tan with brown blotches, are common in Illinois and not dangerous.

In winter, the snakes don't move around much, and Cosner said she probably wouldn't have seen them if she hadn't gone into the basement often. "I went down there a lot looking for them," she said. Occasionally, she would see a snake crawling across the basement floor or lying on the edge of a ceiling joist.

A soft-spoken woman, Cosner said she was never fazed by her roommates. "I just happen to like snakes," she said.

Jeff Eaton, 35, moved into the house in April and lives there with his sister. He said they didn't know about the snakes when they rented the house from Jan Harastany and Philip Langhof. The Antioch couple did not want to comment for publication.

He said he has seen garter snakes under the porch and has blocked off the area in hopes of keeping them out when it turns cold. "Garter snakes don't bother me," he said.

If he saw a fox snake in the basement, he said, "I'd probably try to get rid of it."

But Eaton said he has an 8-year-old daughter who lives with him on weekends and she isn't fond of snakes. "She's kind of worried about it," he said.



Home's sale is feared

The house was probably built 50 years ago, Corn said, and was first used as a summer home when the area was a summer resort community. After Cosner moved out of the house in September 2002, Harastany and Langhof put it up for sale.

Fearing that the snakes' winter haven was in danger, Corn tried to persuade the Forest Preserve District to buy the house and turn it into an educational center. The district's land acquisition committee discussed buying it, but it wasn't "able to reach any kind of agreement with the owners," said spokesman Andy Kimmel.

The couple paid $105,000 in 1996 for the house, which included 1.3 acres, according to records from the Lake County recorder of deeds office and the county planning office. In January 2003, the couple listed the house and another lot, a total of 2.24 acres, for $663,800, according to a real estate agency. They took it off the market in September 2004, but Corn fears the land is still ripe for development.

Steve Barg, executive director of Liberty Prairie Conservancy, a Lake County non-profit organization dedicated to land preservation, wants to save the house and the surrounding land. He said he has contacted several foundations but hasn't been able to come up with the money to buy it at market value.

"Snakes have the hardest time dealing with development," said Nathan Aaberg, the group's development director.

Barg is concerned that if the house is demolished and the land is developed, the snakes may try to cross Grand Avenue in search of a new winter den. Roads are a "death trap" for snakes, he said.

Championing snakes isn't a popular cause, but Corn said finding a permanent winter home for the fox snake population in Fourth Lake Fen is worth the effort.

"They're the biggest snake in this area," he said. "If we remove a species like this ... pretty soon we don't have a marsh. I think it's a little chunk that's important to the ecology of the marsh."

Although Corn said he's not optimistic about the house's future, he has some hope. He keeps buying lottery tickets and told his wife that if he wins, the first thing he's going to do is buy the house to save the snakes.

"I know that sort of sounds silly," he said. "But hey, why not?"

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...ck=1&cset=true
 
Old 08-25-2006, 10:50 AM   #2
kmurphy
Interesting article. Seems to me it would be less expensive to build some kind of "snake structure" on the preserve land. Or maybe they could just move the structure to preserve land.
 
Old 08-25-2006, 03:30 PM   #3
Nero557
I also agree with you on that one, but maybe he wants that house because they have been going there for so many years...
 

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