TYLER, TX (KLTV) -
While working in your yard this summer, you may have stumbled upon a slithery guest; snakes are out.
While they can be scary, you may not want to kill them out of hand.
Daryl Sprout is a herpetologist with a sense of humor. With his educational comedy show, Snake Encounters, Sprout teaches kids why it's important to not kill snakes and what do if you see one.
His message: We can co-exist with snakes. Here in East Texas, we have been seeing a few more of them this summer.
"Well, we had no winter. If the bottom of the food chain flourishes so does the middle. So it's actually a very, very good thing that we have the snakes there because an increase in rodent population isn't good for people," says Sprout.
People, like Tammie Green, who found a snake her yard on Thursday and another one on the side of her house a couple of weeks ago.
"When we first saw it, it was right here on this wall," says Green.
Green, like Sprout, shares the belief in not killing snakes.
"My brother has always told us not to kill the good snakes only the bad ones, and so they took the snake and threw him in the creek. We haven't seen him since," says Green.
Sprout says soon we will be seeing even more snakes. In a couple of weeks it will be baby season, and all of those baby snakes will hatch and venture out.
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