Got a phone call this afternoon from my brother in law asking me if I want some snakes.Of coarse he don't know what kind they are.He usually trys to give me some stinky old garter snakes.

Well he tells me they are 4' water snakes.I tell him I'm busy watching kids,and if he would bring them down to my house,I would look at them and if they are water snakes I would let them loose on my property.

When he gets here he gets a big box out of his trunk and in it are 3 nice easterns.One was wounded pretty bad(they were dug up from a shale bank with a backhoe)but the other two he caught by hand and are in good shape.

I released the wounded one out in my woodlot in hopes that it will make it.Of the other two,it looks like a 1.1 pair strictly by looking at the tail length.The one with the short tail(female) is pretty swollen and looks gravid to me.My question is:would the gravid females be noticably swollen right now?This would be about that time right?

Anyhow,I set them up in a 20 gallon long with news paper,a hide box,water bowl,heat pad and a clamp lamp with a 60 watt bulb in it.I'm going to hang onto them for awhile to see what happens.My black rats were copulating thursday night and I figure if I'm going to set up an incubator for those eggs,I might as well try to hatch out some easterns too.

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