Reptile & Amphibian Forums

These pics are of a little known snake that has only been described to science since 1987!. There is VERY little data about these snakes available at all, as they are EXTREMELY secretive, and rarely ever seen. Several years ago, they were only known from a few counties in Central/Southern Florida.....the mother of the snake(pictured below), was caught by a friend of mine while driving home from work in DeSoto County, just south of Arcadia. He noticed a snake crossing the dirt road he was traveling, so he quickly pulled over, and hurried to capture it.....to his amazement, he noticed the snake was a gravid female!!!. He took her home, and within two weeks, she deposited a nice looking clutch of eggs......A couple months later when they hatched, I acquired one.....she was a problem feeder for several months, and I had to force feed her VERY small baby anoles,.....I put pinkies in with her every week and ignored her, only to come back and see the pinkie still there!!. This went on for a long time,.....one day, I came back to check if the pinkie was still there(expecting it to be!)...and it was GONE!!!!,...I was so happy to see the huge lump the pinkie made, I wanted to do "cartwheels"!!!....anyway, from that day on, she was a ravenous eater, and grew quickly. It got to when I lifted the lid to her cage, she would "zoom" up to snatch the mouse from my hand......she was an absolute pig!!LOL....she went from eight inches, to 33 inches!!.....regretfully, she was loaned out to breed, and while in another's care she later died........That was really upsetting to me,....she was a very cool little snake!. anyway,......these pics are from years ago, when they were virtually unknown................................Doug

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Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!

Doug, Thats outstanding man.Thanks for sharing.

Shannon

Thanks Shannon,..I'm glad you can appreciate these rare little kingsnakes.............................................Doug
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Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!

Hey Doug,
I heard there was another one found in Desoto County in 2006. As far as I know it had been around ten years since the last one there. pretty interesting that it's known range is so disjunct from other mole kings, and then it's own range map is full of big gaps too.
Lindsay Pike

Lindsay,.....I see that you have a nice little "pile" of your own there!!LOL. It is kinda' funny how they are from such an isolated range, and never seen......If the one you referred to in DeSoto County is on CNAH(Center for North American Herpetology) website, as well as several other sites on the web, that is mine. Although it most certainly could be a different snake. Your hatchlings look EXACTLY like the pics that my friend sent me of the siblings to mine years ago....Where did you get your stock from?.......also,how did you know of the other "Mole" in DeSoto?..........best regards,.......................Doug
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Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!

Wow looking at those Mole kings got me to thinking. There have been days when road cruising in Collier county when we were pretty tired from driving and snake hunting when we would see so many pygmy rattlers we would just real casually “call it” and identify the snake ahead on the road. We’d really boringly say “pygmy” which translated meant- “boring snake- keep driving”. Now I wonder if any of those snakes were called wrong. Those things look exactly like those “pygmy” calls back then. I have to admit if any of those were mole snakes, I wouldn’t have been able to identify them cruising by. I never saw one out there that I know of... makes me wish we’d have at least looked real close as we cruised on by them.

Norm,........As I'm typing this, I can picture you guys driving by a bunch of Mole Kings, sayin' " Nah, keep drivin' dude, those are trash!!, it's gettin' late!"...LOL!!, I'm snickering to myself just picturing you guys doing that!LOL...But, more than likely, they were "pygmys" anyway....but, could have been at least one in the bunch!!..........One thing I can be sure of,.......I bet you stop and examine them more closely next time!!!!!!!!LOL.............later buddy,.....Doug
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Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!

I did spot an oddity out of the bunch once, and it too looked a lot like those pics! It was a southern hognose, and they are not supposed to range that far south on the west side of Florida, are they? (south of Alligator Alley!) Dead ringer for a pygmy too, though. Maybe that should be “not dead” ringer...

Are you absolutely sure it was a Southern(simus), and not an Eastern(platyrhinos)....in any case, that's pretty cool! I was driving to my friends house in Ft. Pierce about two years ago, and as I was going down the off-ramp of I-95, I saw a snake wiggling across the road(glad nobody was in back of me) cause I VERY QUICKLY came to a stop!....(I could picture me telling the judge, .."but there was a snake in the road!!!LOL"...turns out it was a cute little chubby "melanistic" Eastern Hognose, he was cool as heck and solid black!! I kept him for a while in hopes of finding some toads to feed him,......no such luck, so I returned him back in the area I found him.....very next night, I found a nice chubby toad that I could have given him for his "farewell" meal!!LOL...........ps,..from my literature,"simus" range is from extreme southeastern North Carolina, down to Central Florida, and west to eastern Mississippi......but who REALLY knows for absolute sure!.......I can still picture you driving past all the "Mole Kings" telling your buddies that they're garbage!!!!LOL, that's funny as heck!
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Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!

Honestly, I don’t know for certain if southern or eastern. I most likely just assumed because it was so far south, it must be southern! I didn’t keep it, but it was a real cutie. Here’s a picture I scanned from Burke County, North Carolina of a black hognose I caught when I was fourteen. It was decent size, and I kept it a couple years as toads were easy to find. The locals called them spreadin’ adders, and you can see from the grainy blurry picture, the thing did have that “triangle head”. I though a solid black one was a really rare find when I got it, later learned- not so rare. Good looking snake, actually.

Thanks for posting that old pic!....yes,kind' funny, "Southern", when referring to the entire U.S., not Florida!LOL.....take care...................................................Doug
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Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!

I am sorry to hear that, what a great story of her pregnancy! Great looking snake! Mark K probly has the 411 on these.
Todd Hughes

Thanks for the kind words!,..glad you like them,........Doug
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Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!

I don't think they are rare as much as hard to find. You need to know where to look, and more importantly when. From what I have observed and heard about others, they are restricted to a 2 month window of surface activity. The WC ones I observed as well as the babies are very difficult to get feeding, preferring snakes and skinks to all else.

I unfortunatly lost my 2.2 cb babies from my wc clutch when I moved to Chicago but I believe Lindsay or Dan Parker has the female they came from. And both of those two have or at least had adult pairs from the area some of us where finding them a few years back. It is funny that the one you got came from a wc gravid female and of the live animals I know of being found a large portion of them have been gravid females. hey there is a hint of "when" to look.

Jason

Yes, I agree with the not being naturally rare, just extremely secretive, and fossorial in nature. Plenty of prime habitat in Central Florida for them to thrive. I have a few friends in Ft. Lauderdale that also have some.....the photos of the one I had is on several websites on the net along with a history/meristics written by Deron Hartman. They are cool little snakes, thanks for posting,...................................Doug
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Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!