About three inches of the tail end broke off when we picked it up. Still pretty long! We think it was a Gray Rat Snake (like the one I wrote about before, here and here). It was in the vicinity of the duck pen.
Arrrr!
It smelled really... snakey.
Serpeniferous? No, that's not right. Serpenoleic? Serpenodoracious?
13 comments:
Herpetodiferous?
Basilistic?
Very cool! You should make some kind of trophy out of it and post it around your animal pens as a warning to the other snakes who think about tresspassing.
Course, I guess it wouldn't be much of a warning, since molting is non-lethal.
Oh well.
You should use it to make yourself a handbag or shoes..
I love that last picture. Beautiful.
Cool skin!
To keep it from falling apart more, dampen it. That makes it flexible and you can roll it up to store it -- just dampen it again before unrolling.
Herpetofragrantistical soap? _Somebody_ somewhere wants it.
The late Zea Mays smelled just like new leather shoes. As far as I can tell, Shep the ball python doesn't smell like anything. I'll have to go over to our friend Emma's and sniff her rosy boa, her western hognose, and her um some-Mexican-place milksnake, see what everybody has in common...
Snake-sniffing. Don't tell my mother.
About a year ago we had some guys at our house to wash the windows. I'm not sure where they’re from originally, somewhere south of the border. My wife told me that when she got home from picking up the kids, the leader of the crew greeted her and said something about snakes helping you hear better if you put one in your ear.
She wasn’t sure if she misunderstood his broken English, so she humored him and moved on to her next task. A few minutes later he asked her if he could buy some snake from her. She asked him to show her what he was talking about.
He led her to a small greenhouse-window in which we display our natural history relics – deer antlers, empty box turtle eggs, fossils, etc., including a couple of snakeskins.
He pointed to the snakeskins and said that when the snakes “undress,” you take a small amount of skin, ball it up and stick it in your ear. During the night you will hear a dull thumping. The next morning you will be able to hear someone sneeze in Australia, he said.
He added, it worked for his grandfather, so it must be true.
She broke off a small piece of the snakeskin and gave it to him.
Neat.
Sheds are about 25% longer than the snakes that shed them -- if that makes you feel any better :)
I am impressed both by the post and the information shared by all the comments. Even with 25% extra, I don't think I have ever seen such a long snake here in Ontario. I do remember them from Kansas however.
FC & Pablo, yeah yeah! You've got the idea. :)
Colleen we had a rattlesnake skin that we preserved and talked about doing just that, LOL.
H&B I have small feet but not that small. :)
RD isn't that head part cool? I don't guess I've ever found an entire skin like that before.
Ron, well I didn't show what happened next... I gave it to the cats to play with. Oh well it really was smelly. Here's how to get a good snootful of a snakey smell: catch a wild snake, and put him in a bucket for later release away from chickens. (Leave him in there for several hours, because you want hubby to see him.) When you take the lid off later, voila! Snakey smell. (You're probably right about the Herpetofragrantistical soap too!)
Tom, very interesting! I wonder how in the world they ever figured that one out. You think they went around just stuffing things in their ears until they found something that worked?!
Swampy, I didn't know that, thanks! It makes sense though.
Herpecalifragilisticexpialidocious?
Ophidian.
Post a Comment