One of the most positive and constructive uses of animal communication is helping to mitigate human-wildlife conflict. When humans and wildlife have a conflict of interest over the same resource, it is typically the animals who suffer for their choices. Rarely do people search for compromise and share resources with others. Occasionally they might, if the resource is low value and the animal is cute. But what if the resource were your backyard and the animal was a rattlesnake? If you were unwilling to share the space, what might happen if you politely asked them to leave?
Such a scenario presented itself in 2017 while I was working in the dhole exhibit of the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. A fellow keeper and I were cleaning the three acre habitat in mid-summer, snake season, and happened upon one of the largest Red Diamondback rattlesnakes I had ever seen. It looked to be about 1.5 inches in girth and about four feet long. Relaxed and stretched across the dholes’ favorite denning corner, I found myself in a quandary.
For starters, this was a dhole exhibit, not a rattlesnake exhibit. My job as their caretaker was to keep them safe, and a rattlesnake bite could easily kill these 40lb. dogs. But three acres of gopher-rich riparian grassland surrounded with chainlink fence is prime pickings for native snakes. Rattlesnakes are territorial, and this one would never have gotten so big had she not known a thing or two about survival. Clearly, we caught her at home. Perhaps she and the dholes had already met, or maybe she was taking advantage of the place to herself while we had the dogs off exhibit. Either way, knowingly releasing the dogs back out to this snake was negligent. I could not abide with her staying here.
Park rules at the time stated that keepers were no longer allowed to move snakes. We were expected to call our Security Rangers to box and relocate venomous snakes, despite the fact that the Rangers were not particularly skilled or motivated to perform the task. Plus, it would be at least a 20 minutes wait for them to arrive at this remote location in the Park, plenty of time for said snake to get herself in a less accessible place, like down a gopher hole. If she were still catchable by the time they got here, I was afraid they would bumble the job and hurt her trying to pick her up and stuff her in a snake box. Furthermore, research shows that translocated snakes have a high mortality rate of well over 50%, survival rates being less the farther the snake is moved. I didn’t want her harmed, just absent from this yard.
Clearly, the best solution would be for our snake-friend to choose to leave on her own. (It wouldn’t hurt to ask, right?) At this point, my colleague and I were standing back at a non-threatening distance, watching her calmly slither farther into the tall grasses. I quietly focused my communication toward the snake, who stopped moving and held her position for the duration of my message. I told her how beautiful she was, that we wished her well and that she was in danger. I then applied Amelia Kinkade’s mental sandwich technique of visualizing what I wanted, what I was trying to avoid, and again what I wanted.
I began by imagining her calmly continuing on her chosen path, sliding through the grass straight toward the chainlink fence that divided the exhibit from an inaccessible no-man’s-land. She would be safe there. I imagined the feel of the chainlink fence under her belly as she passed over it, and the cool, dark shelter under the eroded concrete walkway beyond the fence, where no person or dhole could reach her. Next, I imagined the Rangers arriving, making a mess of grabbing her, pinching and dropping her, stuffing her clumsily into a dark box all scared, then being dumped in a foreign place, lost and disoriented. Then, I repeated the through-the-fence scenario. I did this twice for good measure.
Now finished with my message and the Rangers on their way, my colleague and I nervously watched as our snake resumed her languid pace through the grass along the trajectory I had suggested. We lost sight of her in some clumps of Pampas grass and crept down the fence line below the backside of the grasses, just in time to see her approach and pass through the chainlink fence, giving us a resounding “Buzzzzzzzzzzzz” of her rattles on her way “out the door.” She literally went exactly where I asked her to go, without us herding or pushing her with our proximity. And she was safely gone well before the Rangers arrived. Her exacting and timely behavior showed us she heard me loud and clear!
Once our snake was silent and out of sight, I thanked her for listening and told her I was glad she was safe. Knowing she was still a threat to the dholes (and the dholes still a threat to her), I asked her to leave the dogs alone and to stay clear of people, who were not safe for her. Then, I wished her well. (I also warned the dhole pack-leader of the snakes’ proximity and visualized him keeping a safe distance from any “nope-ropes.”) Ultimately, no snakes, dholes or people were hurt in this event, and a potential human-wildlife conflict was transformed into more of a negotiation than a conflict.
My colleague was stunned that our snake had three acres to escape in, yet chose to go through the fence I suggested. She kept fixating on the idea, “What does a fence mean to a snake who can easily pass through it? A fence is no barrier to a snake.” Likewise, our differences in species and languages need not be a barrier to effective communication. The next time you are faced with a potential human-wildlife conflict, consider a compromise, or at least a polite request for a mutual solution. Remember, you don’t get what you don’t ask for.
Surprisingly, I never saw that snake again in the following five years I worked in that exhibit.