caught a moutain king snake last night...

thegelding

beautiful little snake, about 2 feet long...



now i love snakes and had many as a child...my wife knew this and made me vow when we got married that all our pets had to have legs...



so keeping this beauty is out of the question...



i caught it only because it was crossing the road in our urban neighborhood (we have moved to town from the country) as i was teaching my daughter how to drive a stickshift...so a) i don't want this lovely creature run over by cars and b) leaving it to wander this neighborhood is equal to either being run over or hit by a shovel....



so i want to release it to the wilds...the problem is i don't think this snake is native to our region...california, arizona and mexico, but will it be ok this far east and north if i release it into the sandia mountains??



i was also going to call the zoo and see if they want it for the reptile house, but they likely won't need one...



thanks for any thoughts or help





g

billybobsky

call the zoo... they will take the animal most likely...

thegelding

will do that this morning...snake really has a lovely temperment...here is a photo...and yes that is a 5 gallon water jug...i sadly had nothing else to put it in for the night



g

defiant

Wow! The snake looks cool. What kind of temper has she? Mild or wild? And would the bite of one of those be real bad?

thegelding

king snakes are one of the most docile snakes, make great pets...my first two snakes as a child were california king snakes...love to be handled, but great escape artists...ours were always getting out and hiding around the house....



as snakes they squeeze their prey to death (mice, lizards, other snakes--including rattlesnakes)...so they only have two tiny teeth



when i caught this one it gave me a little bit on the finger...it has been a while since i have caught snakes, so it really was my own fault...after that i had no other problems with it....here is a picture of the two tiny teeth marks...it didn't hurt and i didn't really know i was bit untill i looked at my finger and saw a drop of blood there...and dang it is hard to take a closeup photo of your own hand...and i'm not really simpsons yellow



g









also, they look alot like coral snakes...coral snakes are poisonous...just remember,

"red touch yellow, kill a fellow...red touch black, poison lack..."



or, yellow touch red, fellow your dead



but i could see that the red and yellow markings didn't touch so i knew it was safe to catch....



i have caught a couple of rattlesnakes since i have lived out here, but i always use a rake and an igloo ice cooler to catch those...use the rake to pick them up, put them in the igloo and take them to the hills and set them free

thegelding

good call billybob...the zoo does want it...



they think it will be a new mexico milk snake since mountain king snakes are not native to new mexico...

mountain king snakes and new mexico milk snakes look exactly the same to me...the zoo is doing a big breeding program with nm milk snakes and tell me that they would love to give it a good home...so that is nice...taking it over at lunch time...



sent him an image of it...his reply:



Hi G- Yep, no doubt about that one, it is the NM milk. The mountain kings have a white or whitish snout. Very nice looking beastie, and color is very typical of this area and to the north. They intergrade with the

Mexican Milk snake near the Davis Mountains and Big Bend in Texas, and the animals from SE NE show a lot of influence from the Mexican subspecies genetics. We will be very pleased to have it.





thanks all



g

thegelding

milk







king



yeah, white nose on the king, black on the milk



g

709

Nice. I love a happy ending.

cybermonkey

if i were you i'd MOVE HOUSE!!!



I lived in S.C for a year and the amount of snakes freely roaming makes you very paranoid. I'd go to work at the Kohler plant and there be those stripy ones trying to ambush yer in the carpark, Go for a walk in the woods and you get chased back the other way. I once walked up the road and saw 3 squashed ones and all that time i was there, we discovered that we had copperheads living under the house!!



I tell yer, It's i wonder your all alive over there with all those nasty slimy poisonous snakes and spiders terrorising innocent bystanders



After moving back to the UK i could finally sleep easy.

thegelding

dang, cybermonkey...what starts with p and ends with ussy??



jusk kidding...



lots of people hate snakes...i have always been fascinated by them...



took the snake to the zoo just now...was nice...the snake was curling around my arm and being very affectionate (in snake like ways)...the zoo keeper told me it was a male and that not only would he give him a good home but would also give him a good girlfriend too...



better than being run over or hit by a shovel any day...



g

billybobsky

glad it worked out...

mattjohndrow

yeah, snakes are cool. my first experience was in an Indiana zoo, somewhere in indiana...yeah, they had boas, and it was awesome!

defiant

Nice to hear that the snake got a good home... and a girlfriend too! What a blast!

existence

Unless the snake likes other male snakes more so than females.

billybobsky

from what i know about snakes, i don't think they really have much sexual preference to begin with anyway... anything that looks like them and slithers is good enough...

/mandolux/

I think the old saying thegelding goes like this: "red and yellow you're a dead fellow, black and yellow you're an ok fellow." (or something like that)

ijerry

Nice move G...Makes me happy that somebody cares enough about New Mexico wildlife to keep it going...Looked like a beauty...I used to love the rattlers near my house in Santa Fe, but it has been a looong time since any snake has threatened me up here in BFE, or perhaps BFW would be more accurate...We are currently getting snow, so you can see the possiblity of any slithering creature coming out anytime soon...Hey, when the wife and I go down there, we will stop by the zoo, and I could be like..."My buddy caught that snake right there!" Cool!

defiant

Quote:

Originally posted by billybobsky

from what i know about snakes, i don't think they really have much sexual preference to begin with anyway... anything that looks like them and slithers is good enough...

it was the thought that counted

carol a

Hi gelding -



Your snake is lovely. I just happened to show a snake video to my students today - about how important they are in the balance of nature, and about what 'bad press' they get. I'm sure they've seen plenty of nature videos, but they were quite transfixed by this one. (The video clip was to accompany the story "Rikki Tikki Tavi.")



My ex was into snakes. I mentioned in another thread that when he was traveling in Asia, he sent a bunch of snakes back to the States, for a biology professor at our university.



So, for awhile in our apartment, we had a bamboo viper, a hog-nosed viper, a puff adder, a reticulate python, and a brown spitting cobra. Quite a menagerie. Too bad you can't educate your wife about snakes. Tsk.



Some snakes are quite amiable - like your milk snake. (Your wife might have enjoyed getting acquainted with it. I hate to think people can't change, grow, and open their minds.) Our python, on the other hand, had an extremely nasty personality. Really malevolent.



How old do you think your milk snake might have been?

thegelding

hi, carol a or b or c



have tried to change the wife, not possible...just a phobia of hers...this snake was very pleasent...after the little bite i got while catching it...even that bite was very minor...after that it rolled about my arms and moved from hand to hand and was quite calm...i would have loved to keep it, but i was given the option of keeping the snake and signing divorce papers or not keeping the snake and merely looking at the divorce papers that would be kept nearby for the misses to bring back out the next time i catch a snake in the neighborhood...



she knows me too well...afterall it has been 25 years that we have been together



snakes have always been at least somewhat important to me for whatever reason...use to take my pet california king snake to school for show and tell...i would wrap it around my neck and pretend like it was strangling me...never failed at getting the teacher to start yelling and look like she was about to pass out...twas sweet



slither was a great escape artist...he was always getting out of his cage and roaming about the house for a week or so till we found him here or there...once he came out when my grandmother was visiting...just slide right out from under the couch cushions right between her legs...now grandma was screaming and we all went running over yelling, "alright, grandma found slither!" and grabbed the snake, paying no attention to grandma who was near having a heart attack...



not to mention that summer in pennsylvania when i caught about 100 gater and ring neck snakes and kept them in my bedroom closet and they all got out...mom wasn't very pleased with me that week



which leads into the reason my lovely wife had me vow on our wedding day that all future pets we would have had to have legs...

since then we have had mostly dogs and cats...i have snuck a couple of lizards in and we had rats for a couple of years...it took her over a year to get use to them, but she was playing with them by the end of their stay with us...



so we will be staying with dogs it seems, which is great since i love dogs...



but i do miss the feel of a cold-blooded animal wrapping around your neck for warmth...it is a special bond...a symbiosis...it gets warmth, you get a detached affection



kinda like most marriages...



g



not sure of the age...likely a young adult, mostly full grown

alcimedes

Quote:

Hi gelding -



Your snake is lovely.

you know he's married, right?