So when a gopher snake was discovered Saturday in a shipment of Christmas trees being unloaded at a store in Hilo, it sounded alarm bells. “Store staff unloaded about half the container before ...

A gopher snake was discovered concealed among the trees on Saturday in Hilo. A news release from the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture (HDOA) said the workers had unloaded about half of the Christmas ...

The HDOA's Plant Quarantine Branch swiftly contained the snake and identified it as a two-foot-long, non-venomous gopher snake. Gopher snakes, which can grow as large as seven feet, are indigenous ...