If you see snakes in your yard, don’t worry. It’s not the second coming.

Snakes are a natural part of the environment. If they move into your yard, you may be harboring some of there favorite foods — frogs, toads, lizards, mice, baby birds, rats or some other tasty inhabitant.

The best way to deter snakes is to cut off their food supply, said Chris Becker, agent for the Alabama Cooperative Extension System.

“There is not really a snake season, but there are times of year when people might see them,” Becker said. “They are definitely out now.”

People tend to see snakes where there is snake food.

“If you never cut your yard, you live near a vacant lot, a waterway, tall brush or grass, you will see them because those things bring the toads, frogs, mice, rats — the food source — snakes look for.”

Spenser Bradley, forestry and wildlife agent for the Extension System, advises homeowners to clean up any kind of firewood, brush pile, thick vegetation or long grasses. Use traps or pesticides to kill the mice or rats that snakes want to eat. If you remove their food source, snakes are likely to hunt elsewhere, he said.

Repellants don’t work

Snake repellants are ineffective, the experts say.

Bradley said there are no data-proven repellants that work to deter snakes. He explained there are businesses that will come and remove snakes but repellants, including mothballs, really don’t work. For example, he recently went to a home where the homeowner had a bottle of such repellant. He looked on the label and discovered the product was mostly water.

He said the amount of mothballs needed to deter snakes from a yard would be so large it would be unfeasible.

Becker agrees.

Snakes are not like Japanese beetles grubs or fire ants, you can’t put out pesticides, he said.

“Nothing you can put out will really work,” he said. “There are no good products to keep them away. Just keep the grass mowed and the bushes pruned. If you’ve got a pond, keep the edges cut back, and that will go a long way. But nothing is a 100-percent guarantee.”

Since it may be impossible to eliminate every snake if you live in a wooded area, it is important to know how to identify a venomous snake.

Safe or not?

In North Alabama, all venomous snakes have triangle-shaped heads and vertical pupils (like cat’s eyes), Bradley said.

The venomous snakes in North Alabama include copperheads, rattlesnakes and cottonmouths (water moccasins).

All non-venomous snakes in North Alabama have oval or rounded heads and round pupils, he said.

Finally, Becker reminds humans “all snakes are beneficial because they eat the things you don’t want” around your yard and home. He said some snakes even eat venomous snakes.