Watch hundreds of garter snakes slither back to the plains

The "snakes on the plains" saga appears to have come to an end.

Students from the Saskatchewan Polytechnic school joined the Salthaven West Rehabilitation Centre's director, Megan Lawrence, in releasing about 250 slitheringcreatures into the grassatCondie Nature Refuge. The refugeis locateda few kilometres northwest of Regina.

• Rescued snakes headed back to Saskatchewan plains

• More than 300 snakes pulled out of Saskatchewan house

All of the snakes came from a Saskatchewan farm house, where a total of 310 were removed last fall. Some of them were previously released at the nature reserve, while the remainder were taken care of over the winter at Salthaven as well asthe Saskatchewan Polytechnic campus in Prince Albert.

Students at Saskatchewan Polytechnic had the opportunity to study the snakes, which werekeptin a simulatedhibernation inside a walk-in fridge.Hamilton Greenwood, who supervised the hibernation, said hewas impressed at how alert the animals were at their release.

"Astoundingly so," he said."And the whole way down here we kept hearing them rustling around the back seats in their respective boxes, so we're happy to let them go."

The 116 snakes kept at Salthaven West were fed every seven to 10 days. Director Megan Lawrence says they're not as high-maintenance as some of the other injured animals they take in, but it's still nice to see them go.

"It's a great feeling. One, I like to see them back in the wild where they belong. And two, it just saves a lot of time, money and space for us at the clinic," Lawrence said shortly after releasing the snakes. "We were feeding them minnows and earthworms. And then along with that we were cleaning them every few days and they were kept in eightseparate terrariums, so it was a lot of work to keep them fed and cleaned."

Watch the raw video footage and flip through the photo gallery aboveto see the snakes slidinginto the tall grass at Condie.

CBC also used the Periscope app to stream live video of the event.