BETTER TO LEAVE REPTILES ALONE AREA'S RATTLERS FLUSHED OUT BY SUMMER HEAT.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Summer is here and snakes are out.

Local animal shelters say they are getting a half-dozen snake reports a week, though half the time the snake that has alarmed a caller is a nonpoisonous variety.

``They're in people's yards, they're sitting at the back door. We've had calls about red racers and king snakes in people's homes,'' said Sgt. Chris Childs at the Los Angeles County Animal Control shelter in Lancaster. ``The majority of our calls are for gopher snakes. Everybody just thinks they're rattlesnakes.''

Every year some 7,000 to 8,000 Americans are bitten by poisonous snakes, officials say, but few die - only five or six a year - thanks to modern treatment using antivenin.

Many times, the bites could have been avoided, experts say.

About half of reported snake bites occurred to young men ages 18 to 28. A quarter to half of the bites resulted when people tried to tease, catch or kill a rattlesnake. About a third of the time, the victim had been drinking.

``Just leave the snakes alone,'' said Frank Hoffman, who spent seven years at Placerita Canyon Nature Center and recently finished a study on rattlesnakes. ``They are not aggressive by nature.''

But sometimes, a snakebite victim is simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Last month Dr. Lawrence Stock at Antelope Valley Hospital treated a woman who was bitten when she stepped on a rattlesnake while taking out her garbage.

The rattlesnake was a variety known as a Mojave green, whose unique venom contains a neurotoxin that can affect a victim's ability to breathe. Despite this, the woman responded well to treatment, Stock said.

Rattlesnakes live just about everywhere in Southern California, from pine forests in the San Gabriel Mountains to brushy desert in the Antelope Valley to concrete storm drains.

The only venomous snake native to California, rattlesnakes are distinguishable from nonpoisonous snakes such as king snakes and gopher snakes mainly by their heads and their tails.

Rattlesnakes' tails are tipped with ``rattles'' that vibrate to make a buzzing or hissing sound when the snake is agitated. Baby snakes, however, don't have rattles, and sometimes older snakes' rattles have been broken off. Gopher snakes and king snakes also will shake their tails.

A rattlesnake can also be identified by the triangular shape of its head and its skinny neck that joins the head to a thick body. The heads of gopher snakes and other nonpoisonous varieties are about the same diameter as the necks and bodies.

Hospitals see differing numbers of snakebite victims. Simi Valley Hospital, for example, had two snakebite victims in all of last year, whereas Antelope Valley Hospital is likely to get that many every month during the summer.

``We see more rattlesnake bites than most people do,'' Stock said. ``We probably see a couple a month during the summer time.''

Two summers ago a shortage of antivenin had medical professionals worried. This year, local hospitals said they have enough.

``Our hospital has an ample quantity of the snakebite vaccine on hand to treat anybody who comes into our hospital,'' Simi Valley Hospital spokesman Jeremy Brewer.

Hospitals are also getting into stock a new antivenin that is reported as less likely to produce ``serum sickness,'' a treatment response whose symptoms include fever, joint pain and other side effects.

Sgt. Jerry White of the county animal shelter in Castaic anticipates a surge in snake calls as the weather heats up.

``We'll start getting more with the hot weather,'' he said. ``They'll be coming down from the hills for water.''

It is county policy to destroy rattlesnakes caught near homes, although some animal control officers let them go in the wild. Typically, they are destroyed by injection - as are bats and skunks. Although they are not poisonous, bats and skunks can carry rabies.

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HAZARDS OF SNAKES (see text)