The harmless garter snakes are very common through Southern Canada and the United States. There are eleven species, ranging from a foot and a half to four feet long and we can recognize them by the neat, narrow stripes which run down their backs from head to tail. The darker background color varies from muddy brown to olive green. The stripes vary from tan, through various shades of yellow to bright tangerine.

The most common of North Americas garter snakes is, naturally, the common garter snake. The three parallel, stripes which run from his head to his tail are yellow or yellowish green and two of them may be spotted with .dark dots. His darker background color is green or olive, brown or black. The garter snake wakes from his winter hibernation sometime after March and sets forth to prowl for food.

He slides and glides noiselessly through the new grass. His beady eyes are alert for victims and his big, lipless mouth tips up at the corners with what looks like a hopeful smile. All snakes are meat eaters and the garter snake likes the meat of cold blooded animals such as frogs and toads, salamanders and juicy earthworms.

These victims keep a sharp watch for hungry enemies, but the snake gives little or no warning as he creeps along. His color matches the grassy ground and there are no footsteps to shake the ground. The grasses are hardly bent, for his long body slides forward over the same track, inch after inch. The hunter gets within grabbing distance of a day dreaming frog before his victim is aware of him.

At the right moment, the garter snake grabs and the froggy dinner is held tight in his amazing jaws. His dull edged teeth, two rows in the lower and four rows in the upper Jew, slope backward. This makes it harder for the kicking frog to escape. The snake has four separate jawbones, two upper and two lower. They are linked together at the sides and at the front of his mouth with bands of very stretchable skin. First the right sides, then the two left sides move forward as the snake works his jaws over his struggling victim.

A snake, of course, has no claws to tear with and no legs to hold down his struggling victim. He has only his amazing jaws and mouth to grasp his dinner and prevent it from escaping. He may, like the garter snake, have plenty of teeth, but he cannot use them for chewing and his food is always swallowed whole, head first.