I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure it is. Though, it’s colorations look much more exotic in the picture than they actually are. From the top he had all of the characteristic markings of the ones in the Wikipedia article.
Really, I’m not too worried about it. If the best my enemies can come up with is to spirit a snake into my closet that could possibly give me a rash, I think I can handle it. 
I don’t think so either. Here’s a page of Louisiana snakes (lot of graphics.)
I did notice the herringbone pattern on the snake. Ummmm…
My thought was either the one in The Walking Dude’s closet wasn’t a garter snake or the ones in our yard that my grandma said were garter snakes weren’t, so I looked at Google Images. The ones I remember were dark and monochromatic like this one , but I had to go through a few pages to find it. I also thought garter snakes didn’t get as big as it appears they do. So the bright side is that some ignorance that I wasn’t even aware of has been fought.
Well, it’s clearly not a coral snake and it’s clearly, from the head, not a pit viper. So nothing to worry about, unless it’s something more exotic.
I’m not necessarily afraid of snakes, but that would have completely freaked me out. It’s one thing to see a snake in the garden… but in the CLOSET! :eek:
Ditto- holy crap, I’d download in my pants.
And here I thought trouser snake was just a euphemism.
I’m with your wife. In fact, I’d go running out the door, screaming, and the neighbors would probably call the cops, thinking there was a murder or something.
(Once a friend’s little brother brought a garter snake he found into their house. I saw it, and started screaming. Two of our friends came up to the door a few minutes later and told me that they had heard me all the way down the street)
I showed the photo to Papa Tiger and he proceeded to tell me all his Guam brown tree snake stories. Apparently he had to remove a large one from a neighbor’s closet bar once, too. It seems closet rods attract snakes. Who’da thunk it?
Pretty snake!
Hey, maybe the OP’s snake was confused by the clothes rod, mistaking it for another snake, and tried to mate with it or something. Yet another reason to burn the clothes, move away, and nuke the site from orbit (just to make sure).
I suppose you could use a black light to look for reptilian DNA around that rod, but somehow I don’t think you could ever sufficiently prove that negative – at least to the satisfaction of a snake-phobic person.
Somewhere in Baton Rouge, a tall bald man in a Top Hat is very pissed that his pet snake has gotten away
Garter snakes are such beautiful, dignified-looking little creatures. And that’s a pretty big 'un. Probably been subsisting on mice in your house for years. 
Nice living, if you can get it.
You suppose he’s still wondering why he couldn’t get laid?
I like snakes myself, but I’m just as glad that wasn’t my closet. I don’t handle surprises very well, and a snake on the hangers is one HELL of a surprise.
The day we were planning to show our house to prospective buyers, I went down in the basement to water the seedlings and was shocked to find a ribbon snake “sunning” him/herself under the grow lights. Holy shit! I ran upstairs, grabbed the barbecue tongs and a pillow case, rounded up the snake and carried him/her out to the garden.
Over the next few weeks, I kept finding ribbon snakes in the house. WTF?!?? We’d lived in the house six years and now, a plague of snakes?
Then one day I caught one of my cats in the act of gracefully leaping through a hole in a window screen – with a ribbon snake in her mouth. We didn’t even know she was going outside, much less bringing home wildlife.
Patching the screen brought an end to the plague.