Rat Snake

I realize a few of you guys have heard this before but...I just love this story!

What could be taking Marshall so long, I thought? It had been a good twenty minutes since I had sent my son to gather eggs from the chicken house. As Ben (my younger son) and I set out across the yard to see what the holdup was, we noticed Marshall come out of the coop wrestling a very large snake. Now I realize some parents might have needed therapy after such a traumatic event, but I was positively thrilled.

My boys and I had removed many non-venomous snakes from the chicken pen together and spent hours  capturing  snakes in the field, but this was Marshall's first solo capture. He knew the rat snake he extracted from the shed was a non venomous species but he also knew it was capable of biting pretty hard.  I don't want to get all sentimental or anything, but it looked as though my baby was really growing up. Marshall's snake had the telltale signs of ingested chicken eggs running the length of its swollen body. As Marshall struggled with his catch, we watched in fascination as the large snake regurgitated chicken eggs one-by-one on to the ground in front of us. Some of the eggs were intact and others broken and runny. I guess some people might have been repulsed at the scene but to us this was quality father son bonding.

ratsnake1

The rat snake is one of the biggest snakes in Southeast with some individuals exceeding seven feet in length. Although they reach impressive sizes, these snakes pose no serious threat to people. They vary in color and pattern throughout their range. Adults maybe dark grey or black with only traces of a lighter pattern (inland) or yellowish and heavily striped (like we have on the coast).

Rat snakes are powerful constrictors, suffocating rats, birds, squirrels, and even young rabbits and swallowing them whole. They are also particularly fond of bird eggs. Since they are adept climbers they often venture up the sides of barns and houses and into the tree canopy. Rat snakes are at home in wetlands and can be occasionally be seen swimming on ponds, rivers and even in the salt marsh.

Baby rat snakes are about 10 inches long and boldly patterned at hatching, but they lose those markings over the next  several years as they mature.  Individuals have been known to live more than 25 years in captivity. Although they are large, look a bit foreboding and steal an occasional egg from the Mills chicken coop, rat snakes are important members of the ecosystem. They help control populations of mice, rats, and squirrels and on a slow summer day in the country, what could be better than watching a rat snake throw up chicken eggs on the front lawn :)

Tags: herps