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Concolor1 View Profile	Just Got a W/C Gopher to Eat a Frozen Mouse . . . Somebody over on the "Snakes in General" forum asked the identity of a snake they’d found in New Mexico, and I hazarded a guess from the description that it was some variety of bull or gopher snake. I’m strictly a former English teacher with minimal herp training, but I did relate how I owned a Texas Bull I purchased as a yearling at a show last year (now a husky two-footer). I also mentioned I’d just caught a gopher snake locally, which, unless it was somebody’s escapee, was doubtless a Great Basin gopher since I live in Utah. It’s clear to me both snakes read Dr. Zim’s field guide to reptiles (written in the last century), and they followed protocol regarding markings, etc. The Texas bull’s head is clearly larger proportionally than the gopher snake’s, as are the dark brown blotches on the back . . . Catching the gopher was a shock to me, and an even bigger shock to my daughter--age nine--who spotted it on the trail ahead of us in what was essentially a park close to a suburban area. She shrieked hysterically, and after I looked where she pointed and determined, yes, it was a snake, I picked it up and used the butterfly net I was carrying as a snake bag . . . Yeah, this was supposed to be an insect expedition, not a reptile one... I’d taught her to handle snakes for about four years now, but rather than curse her other caretakers for wrongly socializing her to fear such critters, I’ll blame the bull snake and its Texas attitude for her reluctance (she did holler that the gopher was a bull snake). We’re still working on gentling that snake, and she did grab a milk snake hatchling one time that was trying to escape and held on tearfully despite it biting her... What leads me to believe the gopher is a wild snake (even with its gentle, non-hissing demeanor) was the size of the meal it had obviously just eaten. It was either a gopher, a half-grown rat, or possibly a nestling such as a quail . . . This for a snake that was maybe twenty inches long and considerably more slender than its Lone Star cousin . . . I hadn’t decided to keep it (removing an animal from the wild is not a decision I make lightly), but I figured a warm spot in one of my spare cages would be welcome . . . That was three weeks ago, and it promptly turned blue and shed right afterwards . . . I gave it another week, and as my mouse colony had temporarily ceased breeding, and since I know my daughter would’ve hated me if I’d fed it one of the adults (she makes pets of them all), I picked up an adult mouse and some frozen ones for my other zoo denizens including momma and poppa corn snake . . . The gopher wasn’t interested in the least in the live mouse, and my daughter quickly negotiated an agreement with me that if none of the snakes wanted it, we could put it in one of the colonies (which is why I have five females in one, rather than the advisory three or four). Her hopes rose when poppa corn proved to be lazy (he eventually went for a frozen fare) and momma let it be known another shed was imminent . . . I’d already fed the king snake a frozen hopper, but then the Texas bull gave her another reason to loathe it . . . Meanwhile, I’d thawed an extra mouse . . . I feed my snakes in separate plastic shoe boxes to avoid overdeveloping a feeding response (more on that one shortly), and I put the gopher snake in and waited a considerable length of time before it finally sniffed the dead mouse, determined it was edible, and made short work of it . . . As I said taking a snake from the wild isn’t a decision to be made lightly, but I’m going to keep this one (and maybe look for a support group for those who keep too many snakes--or maybe I’ve found one here). The closeness to a heavily populated area has me believing it might well be killed by some ignoramus who wasn’t sure of its identity and "just wanted to be sure." I once watched this happen at a picnic in a local canyon, and the memory still sickens me forty years later . . . It’s nice to know I’m big enough now that I’d raise my voice in protest and probably be heard and heeded . . . And gopher snake populations here are healthy and there are no restrictions unlike with milk snakes or mountain king snakes . . . Oh, about the wisdom of feeding away from the cage . . . A few months ago I was picking a friend and her dog up at an emergency vet clinic . . . A young mother came in with a huge box and said there were two snakes inside trying to kill each other after fighting over a rat . . . I asked to look inside, and yup, two eight foot boas were locked in a death embrace . . . It was a bit of a wrestling match for me to pull them apart (the tech at the desk had fled), but I finally separated them. Both had some nasty lacerations, and I hope everything turned out alright . . . This doubtless points to the wisdom of keeping snakes in separate cages, but I confess right now poppa corn is sharing quarters with a much smaller milk snake simply as a matter of economics . . . But count me among the "feed-em-in-a-plastic-shoebox" crowd . . . Unless they’re boas or pythons big enough for a garbage can . . .
06/11/08  12:48am

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