MKP
01-12-19, 12:19 PM
Hello,
I've been a hobbyist with snakes and some lizards as pets which at one time was avid but in the past 18 years, I've only had one snake as a pet.
This was my Mexican Black Kingsnake, which I got back in 2001 as a very small juvenlle.
He was so small when I got him, he looked like a fragment of a shoelace. So I named him Shoelace.
He was with me for 18 years. I fed him pre-killed mice then eventually small rats.
He attained 51" in length when I measured his shedded skins.
We moved this past summer out to Eastern, WA.
During the time we were doing that we had to rent a transitional house to stay in.
The summer time temps were about 95 with high humidity, we had no AC in this temporary house.
We had to leave the doors and windows open for some cooling.
I had Shoelace housed in a temp plastic container for the short time we'd be there. One of those types of containers that has the snap on lid and is well ventilated.
He normally stayed in a 120 gallon aquarium with a screen top that I set up with hiding places and a water bowl, with an under tank heater and an appropriate bowl.
But he was roughing it in the temp cage and we were roughing it in this house that did not smell good and had no AC.
One morning I was awakened by my wife, she couldn't find the keys so she could go to work. I had put them on the counter, next to the temp cage in my hat. I found the keys and hat on the floor oddly enough and I gave her the keys and went back to sleep.
When I woke up and checked on Shoelace, he was not in the cage.
He somehow powered against that lid and got it open, I did not think he'd have the leverage and strength to do that. This explains the keys on the floor, he must have pushed those off as he was escaping.
I looked everywhere. Down heat vents, I crawled under the house, (what a nasty crawl space too)
I checked around the yard. I searched for weeks.
I lost him. He's gone.
Times were very stressful, we were going through a major amount of strife. We completed our move and had to handle major monetary losses in this move, all things unexpected. We'd planned for months and thought we had covered all bases. There were many more bases to cover.
The 120 aquarium has sat unused in the garage as we've gotten more and more unpacked and tried to organize.
Moving out here to the eastern side of our state, there are many more types of snakes/wildlife to be seen. One the western side, there is only Garter snakes.
I hear talk of a snake locals here call a 'Racer'. I'm not sure what they mean by that but they say its 3-4 feet long, super fast and very aggressive when cornered.
There is rattlesnakes, I try not to show any emotion when I hear them all talk about shooting them onsite. I don't want to kill any of them.
We've seen a few Gopher snakes around in the summer and fall.
I saw one in the crawlspace and it was tiny. A juvenile. I picked it up and it was striking in all directions. Hilarious! I just put it over into the foliage and on its way.
We see quite a few that attempted to cross the road. They didn't make it. (I think people are trying to run them over :sad:
It was very late fall, the temperature was about 51 degrees and a chill in the air. Late October is a time when you don't expect to see snakes.
The sun was out but it was still 51 degrees. That was the high temp of the day, the temps were ready to start heading downwards.
Driving down the rural road back to the highway, I saw a tiny juvenile gopher snake.
I got out, it was still alive and pretty cool so it was lethargic.
With birds of prey, cars and the coming cold, I was certain he would not have lived to see the next day.
So this guy is gonna winter with us this year, I'd like to get him through to spring time and maybe get him to feed once and then in Spring, I'll let him back into the wild and hopefully he can keep the mice down for us. Because there is a MASSIVE amount of mice/rats here.
I'll post in a different thread about this gopher snake because I have a lot of questions about hibernation and winter cycles and feeding a wild caught snake.
So many die here from people, I want to try to get this guy to live.
I've been a hobbyist with snakes and some lizards as pets which at one time was avid but in the past 18 years, I've only had one snake as a pet.
This was my Mexican Black Kingsnake, which I got back in 2001 as a very small juvenlle.
He was so small when I got him, he looked like a fragment of a shoelace. So I named him Shoelace.
He was with me for 18 years. I fed him pre-killed mice then eventually small rats.
He attained 51" in length when I measured his shedded skins.
We moved this past summer out to Eastern, WA.
During the time we were doing that we had to rent a transitional house to stay in.
The summer time temps were about 95 with high humidity, we had no AC in this temporary house.
We had to leave the doors and windows open for some cooling.
I had Shoelace housed in a temp plastic container for the short time we'd be there. One of those types of containers that has the snap on lid and is well ventilated.
He normally stayed in a 120 gallon aquarium with a screen top that I set up with hiding places and a water bowl, with an under tank heater and an appropriate bowl.
But he was roughing it in the temp cage and we were roughing it in this house that did not smell good and had no AC.
One morning I was awakened by my wife, she couldn't find the keys so she could go to work. I had put them on the counter, next to the temp cage in my hat. I found the keys and hat on the floor oddly enough and I gave her the keys and went back to sleep.
When I woke up and checked on Shoelace, he was not in the cage.
He somehow powered against that lid and got it open, I did not think he'd have the leverage and strength to do that. This explains the keys on the floor, he must have pushed those off as he was escaping.
I looked everywhere. Down heat vents, I crawled under the house, (what a nasty crawl space too)
I checked around the yard. I searched for weeks.
I lost him. He's gone.
Times were very stressful, we were going through a major amount of strife. We completed our move and had to handle major monetary losses in this move, all things unexpected. We'd planned for months and thought we had covered all bases. There were many more bases to cover.
The 120 aquarium has sat unused in the garage as we've gotten more and more unpacked and tried to organize.
Moving out here to the eastern side of our state, there are many more types of snakes/wildlife to be seen. One the western side, there is only Garter snakes.
I hear talk of a snake locals here call a 'Racer'. I'm not sure what they mean by that but they say its 3-4 feet long, super fast and very aggressive when cornered.
There is rattlesnakes, I try not to show any emotion when I hear them all talk about shooting them onsite. I don't want to kill any of them.
We've seen a few Gopher snakes around in the summer and fall.
I saw one in the crawlspace and it was tiny. A juvenile. I picked it up and it was striking in all directions. Hilarious! I just put it over into the foliage and on its way.
We see quite a few that attempted to cross the road. They didn't make it. (I think people are trying to run them over :sad:
It was very late fall, the temperature was about 51 degrees and a chill in the air. Late October is a time when you don't expect to see snakes.
The sun was out but it was still 51 degrees. That was the high temp of the day, the temps were ready to start heading downwards.
Driving down the rural road back to the highway, I saw a tiny juvenile gopher snake.
I got out, it was still alive and pretty cool so it was lethargic.
With birds of prey, cars and the coming cold, I was certain he would not have lived to see the next day.
So this guy is gonna winter with us this year, I'd like to get him through to spring time and maybe get him to feed once and then in Spring, I'll let him back into the wild and hopefully he can keep the mice down for us. Because there is a MASSIVE amount of mice/rats here.
I'll post in a different thread about this gopher snake because I have a lot of questions about hibernation and winter cycles and feeding a wild caught snake.
So many die here from people, I want to try to get this guy to live.