I know this is not the Colubrid forum but this is the forum that I visit the most, so I thought I would let you all know what a cool memorial day I had.

I went over to my oldest Daughter's house for dinner last night and just to talk and spend some time. She lives about 6 miles east from my home in South East Lee County, on a small dirt road. So after dinner and chatting the wife and I went home about 8:30 pm and I jokingly told my wife, ok honey watch for snakes as we drive home (I have been road cruising in this particular area before and it is pretty good).

Well I hadn't said that 30 second ago when I jammed on the breaks for a snake in front of us. I got out of my truck to see what it was (it was a pretty good size, no hatchling here) and when I got up to it, it was a beautiful Scarlet King Snake. I have lived here in South FL for 33 years and have never found one before, but always wanted to. This was a nice 24" long one to boot!

With my not believing my luck, she held the snake as we drove home. Another 1/2 mile up the road, I jammed on my breaks again (this time giving my wife whip lash LOL. this was a nice 2 year old (looking two) corn snake. I picked this one up and now the two of us continued to drive home, each with a snake in one hand (I had no bags with me!! I always carry bags with me but not tonight). As we were getting closer to a more populated area I told my wife, ok we are out of snake territory now, and again as those words left my mouth, I again jammed on the breaks, (this time getting the wife mad LOL) and there at an intersection was another nice Corn snake a bit bigger then the last but still mostly a young snake, maybe three years old!



Now we are driving, I have two snakes in my hands and my wife has one and all three of them are with in a 3-4 mile stretch of road. So when we get home I tell my wife that I am going to make another pass through that area and a bit farther east.

I set the snakes up in temporary cages and hit the road. I am out for another 10 minutes when I find yet another corn snake trying to cross the road. As I collect it up it starts to rain, which is why I think there was so much activity. I continued to cruise my normal cruising area, I found one more live snake a Stori Dekay small slug eating snake, that I took to the side of the road he was trying to get to. After that I did not find anymore live snake (frogs of all kinds, but no live snakes) but as I was cruising I was taking a count of the total DOR snakes that I came across and here is the total.

DOR found

8 Corn Snakes

2 Yellow Rat Snakes

1 FL Garter (large female)

1 Beautiful Hog nose (this one broke my heart!)

1 FL Banded Water snake

1 Ribbon snake

1 Glass Snake (aka glass legless lizard)

That with the five live snakes that I found makes a 20 snake night! That was all in a two hour drive! It is still raining here today, if it stops tonight, I may go out for another trip LOL. The huge amount of DORs was a heart breaker, but if I go cruising and get them off the street before a car gets them, then that is one for the good guys LOL.

Thought you guys would find this interesting,

Thanks
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Jim Hopkins "Hoppy"

Hopkins Holesale Herps

Hopfam1@aol.com

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