'Slither' into Acton Nature Center's snake lecture July 3

Summertime equals snake season — but luckily, the Acton Nature Center is here to help.

A free lecture series on snakes will take place at 4 p.m. on Sunday, July 3, at the ANC Education Building, 6900 Smokey Hill Court. The lecture will also be available via Zoom.

Hosted by Texas Master Naturalist Gaston del Pino Borgstrom, the lecture will answer questions like: “What are snakes?” “How can we tell if the one that is slithering through our lawn is a rat snake or a rattlesnake?” and “Why would we want snakes in our backyard?”

Borgstrom, who has been a member of the Rio Brazos chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists since 2019, said he’s been interested in snakes — and reptiles in general — most of his life.

“I've kept various reptiles and have always been excited to go ‘herping’ everywhere I've lived,” he said.

Herping is the act of searching for amphibians or reptiles.

“For better or worse, I've always been the person to pick up every snake I see, once I'm sure that it isn't venomous,” Borgstom said.

During the lecture, Borgstrom said he plans to cover most of the 28 species of snakes commonly encountered in Hood, Somervell and Johnson counties.

“Mostly, I want people to respect the snakes they see and not immediately have that knee-jerk ‘It's venomous and needs to be killed’ reaction,” he said.

Borgstrom said there’s a lot most people typically don’t know about snakes — like the fact that snakes aren’t the only legless reptiles.

“People may be familiar with glass lizards, but lizards have lost at least one pair of legs about 20 independent times in evolutionary history. There are even legless geckos in Australia,” he explained.

He said he is most excited to “give people a new lens to appreciate snakes,” — both the good and the bad — and for attendees of his lecture to be “less anxious interacting with a very important part of our local ecosystem.”

“Many people see (snakes) as something innately dangerous and don't actively try to learn about them or how to live with them,” he added. “I hope that a lecture like this will at least educate the public about what is around them and the benefits of snakes in their area.”

To register to receive the Zoom link for this free program, email: actonnaturecenter@gmail.com. Updates will be available online at actonnaturecenter.org.