By Darrell Kirk
Sounder contributor
My son Hugh and I travel to West Virginia each year to visit family and have always wanted to spend a week in the Appalachian mountains of Cabin Creek to find the very rare cobalt blue crayfish that inhabit the mountain streams. We were excited to find out that another rare creature inhabits our own backyard here on Orcas Island — the sharp-tailed snake!
We spent hours talking about the rare snake and researching where and how to find one. We planned to set out “coverboards” — pieces of plywood or metal that snakes like to inhabit and take cover under. Since one of the sightings of the elusive reptile took place on the rocky slopes of Buck Mountain, we formulated a plan to set coverboards up there.
Before getting the go-ahead to place the boards, I was mowing the lawn near our home at the golf course when I found one, tail sticking straight up out of the freshly mowed grass. I spotted a small, brownish snake with distinctive orange coloring on its belly — a telltale sign of the sharptail snake.
I couldn’t believe it—we were looking everywhere except right under our noses. I carefully photographed the snake before gently releasing it back to the transition area between a large grove of trees and our grassy yard.
The sharp-tailed snake, scientifically known as Contia tenuis, plays an important role in Pacific Northwest ecosystems. The diet of C. tenuis is largely restricted to slugs and eggs of slugs, helping control populations that can damage native vegetation and agricultural crops.
I contacted artist Amanda Azous about a sharp-tailed snake she found on San Juan Island where she currently lives and was delighted to see her response: “I found one, here on Cady Mountain in 2020. I hadn’t heard of any snakes here other than garters. It was the excitement of discovery. Perhaps a species yet unknown. That wasn’t the case but its rarity was enough”
Azous was the Conversation Land Bank commissioner for 20 years and wrote a story for the San Juan Conservation Land Bank in “Nature Notes-Sharp-Tailed Snake,” where Azous noted: “Prior to 2013, there were only five recorded observations of sharp-tailed snake in western Washington and only one observation from the San Juan Islands. Since this species is known to inhabit the Sierra Nevada Mountains from Southern California to Southern British Columbia it is likely more common in the San Juan Islands than previously documented. A more comprehensive study held between 2013 and 2017, that relied on trained landowners, produced nine total observations of Sharp-tailed snakes on Cady Mountain, Mount Dallas, and Young Hill on San Juan Island, and Turtleback Mountain on Orcas Island.”
Citizens can help protect sharp-tailed snakes by preserving the moist environments with surface debris like twigs, roots and leaves where these snakes are most commonly found. Maintaining decaying downed woody debris is particularly important, as sharp-tailed snakes are often found in and under these features.
Hugh and I plan to continue our Buck Mountain coverboard project while documenting our own backyard habitat to better understand what attracts these rare snakes and how we can ensure they thrive here on Orcas Island and the San Juans. We are equally excited to find Cambarus monongalensis (blue crayfish) someday in the mountain streams above our family’s ancestral home of Cabin Creek, West Virginia.
