Luckily you don't have the garter snake problems we had - growing up in New Hampshire, they were everywhere along the streams I fished in... (I'd bring them home and would have as many as I could find in the swimming pool (no chlorine), in case my step-dad went to take a late night swim... sometimes I'd put buckets of minnows in, too... but I digress...)
In the winter, these things would hibernate in large numbers - and you'd stumble across them occasionally... :0)