garter-snake

Because they resemble certain harmless garter-snake like species, they were imported into the U.S. and U.K. under the wrong names, and ended up causing medically-significant emergencies when they bit their new owners.

Archive 2007-01-01 2007

One very flat skunk up near the golf course, a shredded red squirrel in the bog, and garter-snake stains on the paved shoulder by the cemetery.

Luciano Pavarotti jhetley 2007

Incidentally, it was a couple of those garter-snake substitutes that the newlywed Zillers purchased to stock their roadside zoo, although the reader doesn't have to be burdened with all these details, now does he?

Another Roadside Attraction Robbins, Tom 1971

The little sister had fallen, tripped up by some rough roots, and, expecting the poor startled garter-snake to come and make a meal off her, she was calling loudly for help.

Among the Trees at Elmridge Ella Rodman Church

Out of their loutish ingenuity came a great number of picturesque names for natural objects, chiefly boldly descriptive compounds: bull-frog, canvas-back, mud-hen, cat-bird, razor-back, garter-snake, ground-hog and so on.

Chapter 2. The Beginnings of American. 3. New Words of English Material Henry Louis 1921

I do not know whether or not it is venomous, and I am of the opinion that, like the garter-snake, it lives largely on insects

With Sabre and Scalpel. The Autobiography of a Soldier and Surgeon John Allan 1914

The garter-snake is very common, and is not only harmless, but useful in that it destroys insects.

With Sabre and Scalpel. The Autobiography of a Soldier and Surgeon John Allan 1914

When, gasping after the first shock, I pleaded that I'd do anything else, make any other sacrifice for Ellaline's sake, except this _one_, she flashed out (with the odd shrewdness which lurks in her childishness like a bright little garter-snake darting its head from a bed of violets), saying that was always the way with people.

Set in Silver 1901

She says Emma says she'd as soon have a garter-snake seein 'her home, an' doin 'itself up in rings around her all the while, an' Mrs. Sweet says any one as has ever seen Emma seein '

Susan Clegg and a Man in the House Anne Warner 1891

He don't never go to school hardly 'thout a garter-snake or two or a lizard or a toad-frog somewheres about him.

Sonny, a Christmas Guest Ruth McEnery Stuart 1886