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 Found Treasure While Hiking!

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 Found Treasure While Hiking!

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 Found Treasure While Hiking!

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 Nice Pics; Nice Snake . . .

I had a similar experience out with my kids last spring; my daughter, who’s usually fearless, suddenly ran back down the path toward me and shrieked "Bull Snake!" I was incredulous since this was in a gully almost in the middle of the state’s third or fourth largest city, but I focused my middle-aged eyes on the the strange pattern where she pointed, and it morphed into a snake (Yes, I know it’s a Great Basin gopher, but she knew it as a bull snake because at the time I had one Texas bull among my collection of corns and milk snakes).

Like you, I’m generally adverse to removing wild snakes from their environment, but knowing most of the locals’ views towards serpents, I figured there was better than an even chance some yayhoo would do the poor guy in at some point (we were less than fifty yards from a housing subdivision when we found him), and as my breeding ideas with snakes were leaning towards pituophis sp. (I’ve raised a clutch of corns and also have some milk snakes with possibilities), I took the little guy home. At the time he was about 18-20 inches, slightly bigger than a ten month old corn I’d saved from an ’07 hatching . . .

Here’s a current picture, having just removing him from my hibernation closet (more on that one follows):

And another (the quality isn’t so good since I reduced the file size so much; I’m still learning Photoshop and this nifty new camera, which does take excellent shots; blame the photographer):

When I captured "him" (I’m not certain, on that one, of course), this snake, which is perhaps an inch in diameter at its widest point) was distended to almost tennis ball size from the prey it had obviously just ingested (obviously either a gopher, a half grown rat, or some sort of fledgling).

Remember that when someone goes into histrionics the next time you dispose of a full grown breeder mouse to a slightly smallish snake because your big ’un just went into shed . . . Just offer your snake a nice warm spot with a hide (which is what I did, and it promptly went into shed right afterwards); don’t stress it, and don’t make a habit of feeding oversize prey or suggesting that I said it was okay; my only practice is to generally avoid excitable types since they drain one’s energy . . .

This snake took f/t mice as soon as it finished shedding, but abruptly went off its feed around the end of August . . . I understand pits have a tendency to hunger strikes (I’m still learning, folks), so I haven’t panicked although I did try the "pinkies in chicken broth" trick as one option . . . I put it into the hibernation closet (with Momma and Poppa Corn) in the middle of December with the hope of jump-starting its metabolism and only removed him a few days ago, and I’m allowing a chance to warm up before I try offering something to eat . . .

That’s where things stand right now . . . The snake is active, doesn’t appear to have lost much weight, and I’m optimistic . . . At the same time, there are obvious challenges with W/C snakes, and any and all dialogue has the potential to be valuable (BTW, what’s "Reptile Relief Bath," and can one get it at Petco or a pet shop that has a good herp selection?).

Uh oh, Momma Corn just popped up and is prowling around her cage; I’ve fed her well in anticipation of putting her in with Poppa this week, so it looks like I’ll be posting over on the corn snake section shortly . . .

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 Nice Pics; Nice Snake . . .

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 Nice Pics; Nice Snake . . .

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 Well, Here’s My Really Little Pituophis . . .

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 Well, Here’s My Really Little Pituophis . . .