They eat anything from sowbugs to other snakes. They don t sting with their tongue as some people think. Snakes do this several times each year. They are not wet and slimy. Their bodies are covered with scales, small diamond shapes on the top and long rectangles on the bottom side.
Scutes help the snake move by catching on stones, branches and other irregularities on the ground.
The northern water snake spends most of the time swimming in large lakes and open rivers in the southern half of Wisconsin. The black rat snake is arboreal, which means it loves to hang out in trees, and likes hickories and oaks that are 6-12 meters off the ground. The blue racer snake is one of the fastest moving snakes in North America, slithering at a speed of 6.5 kilometers an hour. They eat lots of rodents and other small pests. We need snakes to keep the pests away.