15 years old is the absolute minimum that snake could have been. All I know is that it was wild caught as an adult in 1991. I have no way of knowing if it was 25 or 35 years old. I typically despise when people write off health problems of a reptile or amphibian to old age, because it is usually hardly the case. This one, however was pretty obvious to us all.

It was a black rat snake, don't know how the rattle got in there, stupid speech recognition software!
-----
...the oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it."
Aldo Leopold (1938)

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
Calvin and Hobbes (Scientific Progress Goes 'Boink', 1991)

[ Hide Replies ]

• Large spots in black rat liver - Colchicine, Thu Jan 29 21:05:54 2004
• RE: Large spots in black rat liver - Colchicine, Thu Jan 29 21:06:57 2004
• not helpful, but a question - meretseger, Fri Jan 30 04:32:45 2004
• RE: not helpful, but a question - Colchicine, Fri Jan 30 08:11:37 2004
• RE: not helpful, but a question - meretseger, Fri Jan 30 12:00:09 2004
• I assume histopath is out of the question... - RaderRVT, Fri Jan 30 21:08:05 2004
• Colchicine, Did you find anything out about this liver? np - RaderRVT, Mon Feb 2 19:44:48 2004
• No leads yet! np - Colchicine, Tue Feb 17 19:43:47 2004