Since when is a garter snake protected??? Gads, I've killed several!!!
Garter snakes are protected here on the San Francisco peninsula. When they were extending the BART subway line to SFO Airport a few years back, the project was delayed for a long time because construction equipment ran over a gartner snake. If they ran over me, no problem, but a gartner snake is sooo precious with the libs here.
I don't dare tell anyone about the snakes in my back yard; I'm rebuilding a deck and was playing with some gartner snakes yesterday - love teasing my wife and daughters with them - don't want inspectors stopping my projects.
In my state, ALL snakes are protected. I don't think I could ever kill a garter snake. We have too many cottonmouths for me to get rid of (poisonous snakes are O.K. to kill if they are life-threatening which, since I have kids, is always).
I haven't killed any kind of ant except fire ants since I first encountered the latter. I want as many docile species as possible competing with the invaders.