Manitoba! Exciting Times in a Prairie Province
Snakes, polar bears and floods… has to be Manitoba!
Manitoba is a province at the longitudinal centre of Canada. It is one of the three prairie provinces (with Alberta and Saskatchewan) and Canada’s fifth-most populous province with its estimated 1.3 million people. Manitoba covers 649,950 square kilometres with a widely varied landscape.
Manitoba’s capital and largest city, Winnipeg, is the eighth-largest census metropolitan area in Canada.
Where is the best place to find thousands of red-sided garter snakes in the whole world?
Narcisse Snake Dens
Narcisse, Manitoba! For six weeks, in April and May, they wake up from eight months’ sleep. First the males pop out of the ground and then they wait for the the females to come out of the three large dens. One of these dens can have eight thousand snakes inside. Ew! These dens are perfect for the snakes’ hibernation; the dens are humid and the temperature stays above freezing. This is important because snakes are cold-blooded.
After the snakes mate, the males leave to eat their first meal in a long time! They can travel 12 km. Scientists do not know why these snakes keep coming back to the same den every year.
Every year, hundreds of people come to Narcisse to see these red-sided garter snakes wake up!
