It was a warm, sunny Saturday in the Ticino village of Castelrotto. Sabine F. * and her partner have just made themselves comfortable for an aperitif on the terrace of the holiday home – they have come from the canton of Schwyz for a long weekend. Suddenly F. hears a noise above him, looks up and can hardly believe her eyes!
Two snakes lolled on her awning. “I’ve seen snakes in Ticino several times, but never so close,” F. tells Blick. Together with her partner, she then climbed onto the roof of the holiday home in order to have a better overview of the situation. She describes: “There were really two huge specimens – certainly 1.40 meters long.”
“We fled”
They then carefully chased the snakes off the awning with a broom. The animals withdrew into the bushes. “We thought to ourselves: ‘Quiet at last!’” Said F. But less than three minutes later she heard rustling and hissing again. This time she took a flight of stairs to be able to look at the roof, when suddenly another snake lies at her feet and quickly flees into the next bushes.
When F. evaded out of sheer shock, her eyes fell on the meadow next to the house. There she discovered two snakes that were tightly intertwined. When she got closer to film the two of them, the two let go of each other and one of them came up to them. “That’s where we fled,” says F. with a laugh.
The masseuse suspect that the snakes are Aesculapian snakes – and that the two specimens fighting on the awning and in the grass are male competitors who are vying for the favor of the third snake, a female. “It’s funny, because a friend from the village saw the same spectacle in a different place over the weekend,” reports F. The queues are probably going on in Castelrotto!
Mating season with the Aesculapian snakes
The Aesculapian snake is one of the largest snakes in Europe. Males can be up to 1.5 meters tall, as the coordination office for amphibian and reptile protection in Switzerland (karch) writes on its website. Since the snakes are not poisonous, they do not pose a threat to humans. In Switzerland they are found mainly in the south and southwest. It is currently mating season for the animals.
The males often clash: “If two male animals meet in the presence of a female, this leads to fierce comment fights, which, however, take place without biting,” writes the karch on its website. (ouch)