1. I think kingsnakes attempt to simply overpower the snakes they eat and holding the straight for a period of time may exhaust their prey so that they can be swallowed. Indigos do the same thing.

2. I found a large pile of tin when I was herping with a friend in the low country of South Carolina. As we flipped some of the top pieces a large Eastern Coachwhip crawled out of the pile. We weren't interested in photographing it so we let it crawl off. Over the next 10 minutes while we were dismantling the tin stack, the snake kept crawling away from us, circling around and coming back to its tin pile. It must have done this half a dozen times. We finally finished digging through it and carefully recreated the stack and the snake went right back into it's home.

I worked a summer in southern Texas doing plant surveys (hot, miserable, thorny experience). Almost every morning for several weeks we came across a big male TX Indigo basking on the same spot along a dirt ranch road. Each morning, I would get out and gently move him off the road towards the woodpile he lived in and then move on. After a few days, he seemed to figure it out and as we drove up he would slowly crawl from his basking spot off the side road and be right back the next morning.
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

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