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Northeast residents prepare to do battle

as snakes move into abandoned property

(Published June 22, 1998)

By REBECCA CHARRY

Staff Writer

Doris Woods doesn’t go into her back yard unless she’s armed with a sharp hoe. The next-door neighbors make her nervous.

The house next door is empty, but she has seen the unwanted residents: long, brown snakes. And they don’t stay on their side of the fence.

Next to the Woods’ white brick home on Lee Street NE is a house that has been abandoned for more than 10 years. The gutters are falling off. The roof is caving in. The back yard is overgrown with honeysuckle, poison ivy and weeds that have sprouted into 30-foot trees. No wonder the snakes moved in.

"As soon as people move out, animals move in," said biologist Bela Demeter of the reptile house at the National Zoo. "An abandoned house is a healthy place for a snake. They like tall weeds and anyplace that’s quiet and undisturbed."

In a quiet neighborhood dotted with abandoned buildings, residents are — by necessity — adept at killing snakes. Men, women and children have learned to chop them with shovels, hit them with hammers, run them over with lawnmowers. They throw the carcasses in the alley and watch the crows carry them off.

Brian Perry and Olin Chapman are among many neighborhood residents who dispatch snakes on a regular basis. Perry said he has phoned city officials repeatedly, but "every time I call, the phone just rings."

Snakes seen by Washington residents likely are non-poisonous black rat snakes or northern brown snakes that feed on mice, Demeter said. Copperheads are rare in this area.

Abandoned houses provide an ideal habitat for snakes, which often live in high grass, woodpiles, junk piles and heavy mulch.

Candies Cook, who has lived in Northeast Washington for more than 50 years, is afraid of the spreading adder, a snake she saw often as a child growing up in North Carolina.

"He is green, brown and gray and his head spreads when he gets mad," she said. "It spreads and spreads and that’s how you know he’s ready to strike."

She saw one this spring in the trash pile that has been sitting for more than a year in the unpaved alley behind her house.

"I didn’t need to see but one," she said. "I didn’t wait around to see his brother or his sister. I ran."

Like many residents, Cook has spread sulphur, borax or "snake pellets" around her fence and yard. According to Demeter, however, there is no such thing as an effective "snake repellent." Any chemical agent that would keep a snake from a house or yard would harm humans and make the home uninhabitable, he said.

The problem, Cook said, is the poor drainage and junk left in the unpaved alley by her neighbors.

"We got enough debris here to breed a mess of snakes for the zoo," Cook said. "We got tree branches, big logs, beer cans, old clothing sitting here in this alley. I’ve called everybody I know to get this cleaned up."

Snakes have been a fact of life here for years. Most people put up with the reptiles just as they have put up with drug dealers and potholes. It makes them nervous, but what can they do, some say. At least they can kill the snakes.

But many residents are angry. It’s the lack of city services that brings out snakes in the first place.

Like many Washington residents, the Woods stepped in where the city failed to act. For years they cleaned and trimmed the yard next door themselves. But now that they are in their 80s, they can’t do it anymore.

Abandoned houses were neighborhood problem long before snakes started showing up in adjacent yards. Abandoned homes are dangerous, neighbors say. They attract drug dealers, they’re depressing to look at.

Around the corner from the Woods stands a one-story house disappearing under a blanket of ivy and weeds. It has been empty for more than five years.

The front gate stands open to a small yard of tall weeds. Sun shines through the holes in the porch roof. A curled, yellowing sheet of paper nailed to a boarded-up window announces a $250 fine from the Housing Regulation and Enforcement Division for failure to barricade an unoccupied building and "evidence of solid, human or animal waste." It has no date, no signature and no evidence the fine was ever paid.

"We’ve been complaining about it for years," said Marion Langston, who lives next door and killed five snakes in her yard last week. "They said they had no money to take care of it. Last year they finally boarded it up. Before that, people used to go in there, doing dope or whatever, you know. I used to trim the tree in the back myself so it wouldn’t hit my roof. Now I’m just disgusted."

Abandoned properties are more than just a physical danger and a threat to property values, residents say. They are a psychological drain on neighborhoods fighting to retain middle-class families.

"This is a stable black neighborhood," said Dr. Olive "Sis" Taylor, who lives on Meade Street NE in the house where she was born. "These houses have been in families for generations."

The Taylor home is neatly painted in green and white, with colorful patio chairs, a brass mailbox and monogrammed name plate on the door.

But less than 15 feet away is a house that has been empty for nearly 20 years. The plaster is falling off, the windows are broken. The front yard is full of trash and head-high weeds. The front door stands wide open. Even in daylight, it’s spooky.

"I don’t dare go over there," Taylor said. "I’m afraid of snakes."

"We have called and called and called and called about that house," she said. "My sister died without seeing anything changed."

As summer approaches, residents in Deanwood and throughout the city expect weeds in abandoned yards to sprout even higher.

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator