Teri Schroer, WBS’s Director of Education, took the call. I was busy doing office things when she came in and said, “Jeff. You need talk to the person on line 1.” After just one sentence from the voice on the other end, I knew why Teri put her through to me. “Do you help snakes?” I am a snake enthusiast, and have several of my own at my house. Aside from birds, snakes have some of the most dazzling colors on their bodies in the animal world. Most are an excellent control on rodent populations. Rodents eat the same grains humans eat, so snakes help save the world hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
WBS does not have the expertise to rehabilitate snakes. Also, we don’t have the permits that would allow us to do it. Still, I couldn’t just hang up on the woman, and besides, I just needed to know what kind of snake she had. “My children and I looked it up on the internet, and I think it is a racer of some kind.” The St. Louis area is home to the Yellow-bellied Racer and Black Racer. Both can grow to 4-5 feet, are dark on the top and lighter on the underside, have relatively small heads and big eyes. They feed mostly on cold-blooded animals, like frogs and lizards, but will occasionally eat mice. They are aptly named because they can crawl incredibly quickly.
I asked what the problem was. Carrie Lewis from Imperial, MO said, “I placed a fine mesh netting over my raspberry bushes, and the snake got caught in the net.” This happens a lot. There are many different kinds of plastic and nylon netting that are used for many different purposes around the yard. Snakes can get their heads through the netting, but cannot get the fatter parts of their bodies through, and because a snake’s scales point toward the tail, when the snake tries to back out of the netting, their scales get caught. Usually the snake struggles, which makes its predicament worse.
WBS Assistant Director Jeff Meshach, Carrie Lewis and two of her children, and Odd, the Black Rat Snake
We at WBS will try to help anyone that calls with an animal problem. Since Missouri does allow a resident to possess as many as 5 native snakes as personal pets, I told Carrie to bring the snake in. I would personally care for it.
Carrie, her 4 children, and the snake arrived about 2 hours later. I took the snake out of the pillowcase they transported it in. Yes, it was a Racer (or so I first thought), and it was thoroughly tangled in the netting and had struggled so much there were wounds where the netting got tightest on its body. Its body was dry and rough to the touch, and it was limp and not moving. I thought it was dead, but slowly it started to move as I held it. I asked Carrie and her children to stay in our rehabilitation hospital waiting room and watch through the window. Dana Lambert, one of WBS’s Trainer/Naturalists, happened to be in Rehab, and I quickly recruited her help. She and I gingerly removed all the netting and spread an antibiotic cream on the wounds. I took Carrie’s phone number and told her I would keep her informed, and if and when the snake got better, I would give it back to her and she could release it back to the wild.
I set up an aquarium in my office and placed the snake in it. I had a water bowl in with it, but the snake seemed too weak to get up and over the bowl’s edge, so I placed the snake’s head and neck in the water. The snake immediately started to drink…a very good sign!
Katrina Whitener, another WBS Trainer/naturalist and a fellow snake enthusiast, came into my office 2 days later. She took one look at the snake and proclaimed, “This is a Black Rat Snake and not a Racer.” I couldn’t believe I made such a mistake, but sure enough, it was a Black Rat Snake. The snake was so dehydrated when I first saw it that its features were distorted. With its rehydration its features and color became more pronounced, and now it was easy to tell it was a Black Rat Snake. Black Rat Snakes constrict their prey to kill it before swallowing it whole, eat warm-blooded prey, and are a great natural rodent control.
I gave the snake another day to drink and rehydrate, then I placed a dead mouse in its aquarium. WBS feeds mice to many of its birds, so it was no problem to find one for my patient. The snake immediately ate the mouse, but as I feared, when the mouse got to the wounded part of the body on its way to the stomach, it stopped. It took about an hour, but finally the mouse lump moved past the wounded section and came to rest in its stomach. I tried feeding the snake another mouse, but it wouldn’t have anything to do with it. A snake of this size (about 40 inches long) could easily eat 3 adult mice in one feeding, but Odd (for obvious reasons) seemed quite sore from struggling over just one mouse. Still, eating was a huge step toward healing, so I was happy.
I waited another week and fed Odd another mouse. This second mouse was a little bigger than the first, and odd had an even harder time pushing the mouse past the wounds on its body. I deduced if Odd was going to survive in the wild, it would have to be able to eat full grown mice with me, so I intentionally fed it a large mouse. After struggling for another hour, Odd pushed the mouse past its wounds and down to its stomach.
The next week Odd shed his skin. About 5 days before a snake is going to shed its eyes become cloudy. Snakes do have a clear scale over each eye, so during this 5 day period they cannot see very well and usually stay hidden and inactive until they shed. Odd’s shed came off its body in pieces rather than one, long shed because of its wounds, but it did shed the skin across the wound. The wounds were definitely smaller, so I could tell Odd was healing.
The next day I fed odd 2 adult mice. It ate them both, and both mice slid through the wounded part of the body with no hesitation. Odd was going to be just fine!
On 28 September Carrie and 2 of her children, Jesse and Jamie, came to pick Odd up, and it was released back to the wild. Thank you, Carrie, for showing concern and compassion for an animal that most don’t think too fondly of.
Unfortunately snakes still get a bad rap in our society. Most people cannot identify the many different species we have in Missouri, so many assume any snake they see is a venomous snake, and the snake is killed. Even venomous snakes are shy and retiring, and except for when they are feeding, the only reason they strike is when they feel the need to defend themselves. If you leave the snake alone it will go about its business controlling the small rodents that actually do cause us harm.
If you choose to have a snake as a pet, as with any pet, do research so you can provide correct housing, water and food. Remember, some snakes, like pythons, are great as youngsters, but can grow to well over 10 feet long, weigh hundreds of pounds and will require a lot of expensive food. Pythons are not native to the United States, so you can’t just release it to the wild if it gets too big. The snake will be yours for its life, which can be as many as 50 years. Always remember to choose your pets wisely.
Submitted by World Bird Sanctuary Assistant Director Jeff Meshach
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