Red-striped Ribbon Snake

About the Red-striped Ribbon Snake

The Red-striped Ribbon Snake is the Central Texas version of an elegant design: a slender, fast garter-snake relative in glossy dark olive-black, pinstriped down the back in orange-red with a pale yellowish stripe on each side. Built like a whip and quick as one, it is usually seen flowing through pond-edge grass or skimming across the water surface itself.

Ribbon snakes are wetland hunters. Frogs, tadpoles, and small fish make up nearly all the diet, taken in quick rushes through the shallows, and a pond with a good spring chorus of frogs almost certainly has ribbon snakes working the edges.

This red-striped form is a Texas special, essentially confined to the Edwards Plateau and surrounding Hill Country, replacing the orange-striped version found farther east.

Completely harmless to people, ribbon snakes rely on speed over bluff - grab one and it will musk, but it seldom bites. Their presence is a good sign: a small predator that only prospers where the water and the amphibians are doing well.