Dangerous critter

[Backwoodsboy]

I got a call this morning from the wife of a farmer friend of mine asking me to 'Come quick, there's a gigantic snake in the cellar!' They know that I like snakes and would deal with the nasty critter for them with minimal bloodshed. When I got to the house I found everyone was down cellar and when I went down the owner says to me 'I got it under this box but be careful, don't get bit' while waving his flashlight around. I borrowed the flashlight and peeked under the box and saw a beautiful eastern milk snake, a truly fierce beast indeed, so I picked him up and let him wrap around my arm. The woman who called me fled to the far end of the cellar so I could go upstairs with the creature. The poor little dear was icy cold for we are going to get snow here today and thus I just can't put him outside to try to find another spot to winter over.

He is small enough that I may decide to keep him and if I do I'll need to get either pinkies or at the most fuzzies to feed him. Now all I need to do is figure out a name fitting name for him or her as the case may be. Any thoughts?

 

[Floof]

Hehehe. Yep, those little tiny milk snake are VERY dangerous critters. Glad you were there to relocate the poor thing, and that it didn't become the victim of ignorance (and a shovel)!

 

[pridecity]

You could name him Cellar, for simplicity's sake.

 

[sciencechick]

Some crummy pics:

We'll have to see how he does.

(Backwoodsboy's daughter in law)

 

[Theobald Brooks]

Glad they called instead of just hacking it up. My grandfather killed a black rat snake in his garage a couple weeks ago and then called me after to tell me that he almost called me before. :headbang:

 

[Nanci]

Sometimes they can be hard to get eating mice. I think if you can't, after trying maybe lizard scenting, you could brumate him and release him in the spring, rather than having him refuse food all winter. But maybe he'll just eat!

 

[Rich Z]

I think it would be best to just keep him cool and let him brumate. I used to work with Coastal Plain milks a long time ago, and they were notorious for going off feed long before any of the other snakes did in preparation for brumation.

 

[sciencechick]

Haven'tdone much with him obviously, but he seems to be doing OK. He sits out a lot and doesn't seem spooked by us.

Butch appeared holding Casper (I know he may be a temporary visitor but I name inanimate objects and creatures I pass driving so he needed a name) so I grabbed some better pictures showing off his purdy colors. He was at least as calm as our young corn, if not calmer.

 

[sciencechick]

He appears to have eaten for us on the first try. We tried a dry pink in his tank on top of his cardboard box, and it seems to have dissapeared. Butch hasn't rummaged around or anything, not that we'd want to do that on a full tummy, but we can't see it anywhere and its nicer to assume he ate it for the time being. Next we will be trying something a bit bigger.

 

[Pasodama]

Glad you were able to save this beautiful fella.
Great, too, that it seems he may have eaten.

 

[legitimatehypnotist]

Funny story... Sort of off topic but still relevant...
When I was little, we went on a camping trip in the Adirondacks on this huge mountain. I woke up on about the third day, and there had been a frost overnight, so when I went to put my sandals on, there were all of these BEAUTIFUL mystery albino snake hatchlings, dead, surrounding my shoes. I was on 11 or 12 so I thought, well, this is cool, let me go look for more. As I went deeper into the woods I kept finding all these dead or half-dead little baby snakes, so I was picking up the live ones and moving off of the cold ground and putting them in the rock formations, when I saw this gorgeous live baby, struggling to hold it's little head up. So picked it up and brought it to campsite to show my mother and...
It was a baby albino timber rattlesnake. They were EVERYWHERE. It was freakish.
Needless to say, my mother was the reptile expert and she almost choked when she saw the little smiling face on her daughter holding a live rattlesnake. She jumped up and took it from my hands, and I said, "I think he's dying."
Well, we tried to warm him up while she called our DEC rescue guy, telling him there was a wildlife emergency on the mountain. When he got there, he looked into the little bucket we were keeping him in, and said, "You know, if he bit you, you'd probably be dead right now. He just hatched about two days ago, and probably hasn't eaten and has no venom control." He said it was a miracle I didn't get bitten, because the snake was cold and agitated, he'd never seen anything like this before, thousands of dead snakes of all different species PLUS Albino Timbers.
Anyway, he went into the woods and caught me a cool, blue colored eastern hognose to replace my beloved pet rattlesnake, and to feed him, I'd have scent everything with frogs. We ended up re-releasing him, but it was still the coolest snake experience of my life. AND it helped me, to this day, identify species native to NY, since I've seen so many dead ones that day.

Anyway, thanks for saving him, I hope you can get him to feed, he's a cutie For some reason, your story just brought that to mind, so I thought I'd share.

 

[Pasodama]

Funny story... Sort of off topic but still relevant...

So sad, about all the dead snakes, but ... What a great story.

Albino Rattlers ... So cool! Although I am sure your mom didn't think it was so cool the very moment she saw a live baby Rattler in her young daughter's hands.