Cool Critters: It looks like a nightcrawler, but it’s too endearing to put on a fishing hook
When Kayla Jensen spotted a reddish-brown earthworm slithering out from underneath the log she had just sat on for a water break, she did a double-take.
“My first thought was, ‘Oh, look! What a cool-looking nightcrawler,’ ” recalled Jensen, who encountered the critter on a hiking trail that winds through trees and rock basalt along the Palouse River near the town of Colfax.
But as the tubular invertebrate shimmied away, she realized it was wriggling too fast to be a worm. Plus, it had eyes and scales.
It was a snake – “the tiniest I’ve ever seen,” she said.
Thinner than a pencil and no longer than her Size 7 shoe, the very end of the snake’s tail was pointy, as if someone had put it through a pencil sharpener.
“I spend a lot of time outdoors and have seen loads of snakes, but none like this one,” she said, adding that she snapped a few photographs and forwarded them to a friend who’s a naturalist.
“He got back to me and said it was a common sharptailed snake and that people rarely see them,” Jensen explained. “He seemed pretty excited about it.”
The common sharptailed snake, scientifically known as Contia tenuis, is among the tiniest snake species in the United States. Fully grown, it averages 8 to 12 inches. Curled up, it easily fits in the palm of a hand.
Found in parts of Washington, Oregon, California and southwestern Canada, “they are rarely encountered and little studied,” according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
It’s not clear whether sharptailed snakes are indeed rare or just undetected. Not only are they tiny, they’re also secretive, spending most of their time under rotting logs, rocks and plant litter, particularly near streams and rivers.
In Washington, they’ve been documented on both sides of the Cascades. And yet, “almost nothing is known about their abundance and some occurrences are based on a single observation,” WDFW says on its website.
These miniature snakes – which, by the way, are nonvenomous and harmless to humans –roam the subterranean world in search of slugs and slug eggs, along with snails and small salamanders. They use their barb-like tails to hold slippery prey while they eat, a trait that no other snake in Washington shares, according to WDFW.
Western British Columbia appears to be the farthest north that sharptailed snakes reside. Considered endangered in that region, the province’s Ministry of Environment and Parks recently launched an awareness campaign to educate the public about the tiny brick-red-colored snake that will happily wind around your wrist. Hey, and it’s also a helper in the garden.
“These snakes are harmless to humans,” a province flyer says. “They can also be beneficial because they feed mainly on slugs, some of which are introduced garden pests.”
Or, as Jensen found out while hiking, the little sharptailed snake can be a gentle surprise that emerges from a hiding place in the woods.