Archives of The Cold Blooded News

The Newsletter of the Colorado Herpetological Society

Volume 30, Number 9;   September, 2003

REPTILE ROYALTY -

Prairie king one of numerous snakes worth catching - and keeping
by Joe Doggett

The harmless snake was determined to cross the busy two-lane blacktop of FM523 south of Angleton. It is discouraging how many wild creatures fail to recognize the peril of open roads. I braked hard, flipping the blinder and veering to a stop.

I ran back down the shoulder and snatched the 2-foot snake from the path of on-coming traffic. A truck boomed past. The snake writhed and twisted in my hands, spraying a defensive musk, but never attempted to bite. King snakes are not as irritable as some species.

It was a beautiful specimen, without a blemish. Many snakes carry scars of close encounters - bobbed tails, puckered wounds, healed sores. This one was perfect, as if newly minted in the afternoon April light.

The smooth, dry scales glowed with the iridescence of a recently shed skin. The regimented chocolate blotches contrasted the tan field, and the small head was highlighted with bold lances. The dark eyes appeared severe, almost intelligent.

During junior-high snake collecting days along the uncut banks of Brays Bayou, we rated the yellow-bellied water snake above the western ribbon snake, and the eastern hognose above the water snake, and the Texas rat snake above the hognose, and the speckled king snake above the rat snake - and the prairie king snake above all of them.

Lampropeltis calligaster calliqaster is a classy snake, maybe not as elite as the gray-banded king snake of the Trans Pecos, or the corn snake of the southeast, or the magnificent indigo snake of South Texas, but the best you could reasonably hope for amid the coastal prairies near Houston.

The prairie king is not a particularly large snake, with adult averaging 28 to 42 inches, according to Texas Snakes, the mater work on the subject, written by John E. Werler and James R. Dixon. Mine was a juvenile.

I admired the determined coils and decided to keep the dapper little snake. No laws other than those of decency and common sense regulate the catching or killing of most snakes in Texas, and I promised myself I would promptly release the prairie king if it did not "take" to captivity. Some snakes do; some snakes don't.

I bought a small terrarium - a glass aquarium with a sliding, locking mesh top at a neighborhood pet store. It was a fine cage; the collecting of reptiles and amphibians has come a long way. With our long-ago peach crates and hardware screens, we could not have conceived of such quality.

Remembering old lessons, I folded a newspaper page on the floor of the cage and added a heavy water bowl and a clean limb and a shoe box for a casual "hidey hole". The idea is to provide cover and crawling opportunities while keeping the space easy to clean and free of mites and other parasites.

The snake piled in, at once assuming a defensive coil with high, cocked head and furiously buzzing tail. King snakes, like harmless rat snakes and bull snakes, often vibrate their tails when alarmed. The whirring amid dry brush and leaves sounds sinister - "Rattlesnake!"

The little snake whirred in reverse, backing toward the shoe box, then darted inside. Muffled buzzing continued.

I decided to name the prairie king "Scooter" because it was, well, scooting like mad across the asphalt when we met.

Several days later, after the buzzing stopped and Scooter decided that normalcy prevailed in the rectangular world of glass and newsprint, I placed a live white mouse in the cage. King snakes are uncommonly fond of rodents, but some snakes shocked by captivity refuse to feed.

Scooter's head appeared from the shoe box. The forked tongue quested, lingering on the scented air. The nearby mouse crouched, not feeling entirely comfortable with the situation - and with good reason. The little snake stiffened, then swarmed with a stabbing strike onto its prey.

The prairie king was a head hunter, one of the best "feeders" that I can recall. I kept it for approximately 1 1/2 years. During that time, Scooter averaged one mouse per week (healthy snakes can go several weeks without eating). In round numbers, the single king snake devoured 75 rodents - an effective mouse trap that, in the wild, could climb across limbs or tunnel into holes in search of prey.

During that time, Scooter grew approximately 12 inches, maturing into a fine, healthy 3-footer. The snake was calm and tolerant and, when handled, never struck in anger. Then last October, for no obvious reason, it stopped feeding. It refused several different mice under several different circumstances. Perhaps the cage became too confining.

The snake appeared in good condition, so I decided to liberate it while the fall weather remained mild. Scooter was placed in a knotted pillow case and driven to a grassy field near the original site but a solid half-mile from the nearest blacktop.

I stopped by a levee and opened the pillow case and lowered the snake onto the ground. It froze, tongue flashing, then moved like a stream of pouring oil through the twigs and leaves. Within moments Scooter was gone, reclaimed by the wild.

I returned to the site a week later while en route to Surfside Beach. I did not expect to see the snake but I was curious - sentimental, maybe.

A pickup truck was parked on the levee. Three guys were "plinking" at targets in the ditch. Two carried .22 rifles and one toted a pump shotgun. "See anything?" I asked.

"No, not really," the fellow with the shotgun said. "Just practicing. Shot a snake back over there."

"What kind was it."

"I don't know. A snake's a snake. Sounded like a rattler."