Wild Snakes in Queens NYC?

Today I was introduced to a method for observing snakes in the wild, cover boards.  Ranger Katherine took me out to the various sites to see if any snakes were lurking.  They had both  plywood or corrugated metal sheets secretly placed throughout the park.  We had to use GPS and crawl through some undergrowth to access them.  It wasn't easy ,  Swarming flies  and ever present poison ivy.  I was so glad I wore long sleeves and pants despite the heat, which kept me safe from ticks.  It difficult work, but the rewards were great.  We located and an Eastern Garter snake and an Easter milk snake.  I assisted the ranger as she gently handled them.  She measured their lengths both from the nose to tail and nose to cloaca.  Then she placed them in a soft bag and weighed them with a pocket spring scale before they were released.   For all the cover boards we lifted, we found twice as many mice as we saw snakes.  I took some pictures of the cover boards with the thermal camera on my Ipad2 and it was interesting how it visually showed the difference in temperature despite their being right next to each other. Later, we found evidence of terrapins in the area.  A mound of raccoon scat had the remains of what appeared to do terrapin eggs shells in it.  It is sad that while that egg didn't survive, later we discovered a whole nest of opened shells near the shore, evidence that they probably hatched.  Thank you Katherine for teaching me so much about snakes in out area.