Maine’s Six-Foot-Long Snakes
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 1st, 2010
The Portland Press Herald is carrying an article today, October 1, 2010, about a research project being conducted to study the black racer (Coluber constrictor) in Maine.
While the piece, in general, is about the snake, it details how rare the species is in the Pine Tree State.
The black racer snake is common in the South but it’s an endangered species in Maine, the northern end of its range….
Inland Fisheries and Wildlife teamed up with the Nature Conservancy, a private conservation group, to study the black racer population in the Wells Barren. The 560-acre preserve, and the adjacent Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, is where a retreating continental glacier dropped its load of sand thousands of years ago.
The barren may be home to the largest black racer population in Maine. It is one of the few spots in Maine where the snakes have been documented. So far, none has been found outside York County, except for some specimens collected in the 1800s in the Lewiston area. But the provenance of those specimens, now held by Harvard University, is shaky,
Could some former encounters with rattlesnakes in southern Maine (from such historically significant sites as Rattlesnake Mountain) been mistaken encounters with black racers?
Like a few other species, the black racer can vibrate its tail in dry leaves and underbrush, this resulting in a noise that is reminiscent of the sound made by the rattler of a rattlesnake, members of the subfamily of pit vipers, Crotalinae.
In Boss Snakes: Stories and Sightings of Giant Snakes in North America by Chad Arment, original sources confirm that 10 feet long snakes were recorded for Maine in 1878, near Winslow, and in 1895, near Gardiner. Neither location is in the southern part of the state, in York County, which is the current range of the black racers.
Are reports of cryptid giant snakes in other parts of Maine and New England merely sightings of large black racers?
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
