Sunday supper served for one

Jocelyn Schlachta, an AmeriCorps ranger from Pennsylvania, knew she wanted to serve in Montana but she never imagined it would involve snake handling.

Since 2017, when Camo arrived from Missoula's Montana Natural History Center, the bull snake has served as the wildlife ambassador for Lone Pine State Park. Kept in a corner of the visitor center, Camo became Schlachta’s charge when a previous ranger invited her to take part in a feeding.   

“He’s pretty cool,” she said, even after telling me he had struck her earlier because he was so hungry. He'd also struck himself twice because he probably thought his own twitching body was food. 

Over the last months Schlachta not only has led “Sundays with Camo” at the park, she has managed school visits and warm-weather “enrichment” when Camo gets to move about in the cozy grass next to the visitor center. This last activity always calls for two staffers to supervise just in case Camo starts burrowing, or tries to make a slither for it. 

So far, he’s been well-behaved. Life in captivity means he eats well and therefore has grown larger and will live longer than bull snakes in the wild. Schlachta put Camo at 15 or 16 and said that he could live past 30. 

As Schlachta gathered the tools for mealtime on Oct. 25, a mom and son hustled in. Visiting from Aspen, Colorado, the mom professed it was “sheer dumb luck” that they happened on the event. 

“My son has a corn snake,” she said. “She and the cat are friends.” 

A couple of hunting buddies took their seats, and Schlachta shared snake information while “the mouse has to warm up for about 15 minutes.” She buys them frozen by the bag. 

Schlachta said bull snakes are among the 10 snakes native to Montana, and the largest. Bull snakes' main habitat is dry grassland, such as in south-central Montana. Although sometimes mistaken for rattlesnakes, bull snakes are nonvenomous constrictors. Still, they’re not above coiling tightly, flattening their heads and sort of hissing to strike a rattler pose. 

“They’re predators,” Schlachta said, “but they’re mostly prey.” The biggest enemy of snakes is humans. 

“Snakes get misunderstood,” she said. “They pose no threats to humans, and because they eat rodents they are the perfect pest control.” 

Schlachta pulled on blue nitrile gloves. She warmed the mouse further in a loose fist and grabbed tongs. She invited us to come closer. The boy from Colorado broke free of his phone. 

The lid lifted; Camo waited. Schlachta had the mouse in the tongs and brushed it along his back. Just like that, he struck. 

We watched his body billow slightly with the morsel. The tiny tail sticking out his right jaws looked like a post-dinner cigarette. The hunters smiled and enthused: “That was fascinating” and “That was cool.” 

They relayed their snake story of 30 years ago, when on an antelope hunt near Zortman they came upon a snake coiled tight. One of them got too close and earned the scare of her life.

They nodded at each other, and the one said, “I respect them now.”  

Margaret E. Davis, executive director of the Northwest Montana History Museum, can be reached at [email protected].