Milk snakes are not poisonous. The milk snake kills by coiling around a prey animal and constricting until the prey is suffocated. The snake then swallows the prey whole.
Milk snakes are native to the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. Their name comes from a folk legend that the snakes suck the milk of cows. It probably originated because the snakes were frequently seen near barns. Milk snakes actually live on rats, mice, voles and other small rodents. They also eat lizards, frogs, fish, insects, other snakes and the eggs of snakes and birds. Milk snakes are beneficial to humans as rodent destroyers.
