Huge diamond water snake

[SCReptiles]

Did some snake hunting in Little Rock, AR last weekend. Had some good luck. I captured a diamond water snake that is just over 60” and weights about 5 pounds. I know this one is 3” short of the record, but does anyone know of a bigger diamond in captivity? Oh, and before the bleeding hearts start in about snake hunting, we were on a commercial fish farm. The snake populations and sizes are unnaturally exaggerated and the farm employees are instructed to kill all snakes, frogs, and turtle on site, so we are saving their lives by taking them out alive. =) http://secw.bravepages.com/Chuck/pics/chuck_duston_water.JPG

[shaggybill]

Wow. Nice catch. I've never heard of them getting that big.

If you cover up his head, he almost looks like a canebrake. :)

[snakehunter]

Sweet, i caught a 4 ft racer the other day, weird cause it was 50 out, and windy.

[munchy]

great find SC!! just curious, i realize that the numbers of snakes etc. might be larger than usual under such conditions at the fish farm, but why on earth would they instruct their employees to kill whatever they find???? that is ridiculous. youd think people would have learned by now. nice work getting the snake out of there.

[snakehunter]

Well it maybe that the snakes are eating the fish, and they make money of of the fish, so the snakes are destroying their money making. or it could be that the owner hates snakes

[SCReptiles]

Snake hunter pegged it. The wild herps that come in eat thousands of dollars worth of fish. The one snake that I caught could take down hundreds of dollars a week just by herself. They told me they had seen her before, but had not been able to get her. They were happy to know she was gone! They have pulled 100 pound ally snappers out of those ponds also. It’s a great place for herps, but they are just not welcome!

[munchy]

lol not welcome. funny considering they were all there before the farmers...
what kind of fish do they farm there?

[crocdoc]

munchy, almost every farmer I have ever met has had a desire to kill, flatten, destroy or modify anything remotely natural on their farms, whether it be vegetation or wildlife. Reptiles in particular suffer, whether they are perceived to be harmless or dangerous (although a small number do make exceptions to carpet pythons in their sheds, for they eat rats).

When farmers suspect that the animals in question may feed on their stock, the effort to kill each and every one is tripled. So much for the view that farmers do what they do because they love the great outdoors!

[CONCEPT03]

i dont like them killing herps, but they they cant let a couple snakes stand in the way of progress

[KrokadilyanGuy3]

No biting.. No blood.. No shrill looks.. Cant't be real. Just can't.

[SCReptiles]

They farm many kinds of fish there. The farm spans several miles. Probably the most expensive are the Coy. Large Coy have a high market value, so a snake the size of Bertha here could take down a lot of profit! She was very defensive when I first grabbed her out, but after that if you pick her up gently, like the snake handlers do their copperheads, she was pretty easy to handle.

[bubba]

I used to work at a fish farm in Indiana. The watersnakes there got huge! I found a northern that was 4' 81/2" and that was larger than the record that was listed in Conant's field guide at the time. The snakes had a smorgasboard of frogs, fish, tadpoles and just tons of crap. The employees killed every snake and turtle they found (not me, I sold some to pet shops and secretly released others). It was a herpers paradise! That's a nice diamondback by the way. What are your plans for the big guy?

[mrcanada21]

its human nature to be ignorant....luckily there are a few exceptions.

[crocdoc]

I just remembered a funny thing I saw around 23 years ago. I was with a group of herpers from Canada on a trip down to Big Bend National Park, mainly for the herps (part of a university course), but with an interest in anything and everything we saw. One day we were talking to a ranger next to a pond which then housed (and may still do) the world's only population of Big Bend mosquitofish, Gambusia gaigei. The story is that this rare species used to be found in two natural springs but the entire population had been moved to this spring fed, artificial pond in the park, which was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and had some interpretive signage explaining what Gambusia gaigei was and what they were doing there. While we were chatting to the ranger, a water snake crawled in between us (pretty much over our boots, in fact) on its way to the pond and quickly disappeared in the long grass. The ranger calmly looked down, then up at us and said (without missing a beat), in his Texas drawl "well, there goes half the world's population of Gambusia gaigei".

[SCReptiles]

That's a nice diamondback by the way. What are your plans for the big guy?

Well, right now we have Bertha back at the lab. She has a slight upper respiratory infection. We have her heat jacked up and feeding her vitamins. If I can not find a bigger one, will bill her as the largest water snake in captivity and hopefully draw some attention to our classes.

http://secw.bravepages.com/Chuck/pics/Watersnake_dollar.JPG
http://secw.bravepages.com/Chuck/pics/chuck_neck_water.JPG
http://secw.bravepages.com/Chuck/pics/chuck_tailing_water.JPG