Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi all.
While on our way home from my son's Grandmother's house a couple days ago my boyfriend & I almost ran over a snake in the road.
When we backed up to move it (he thought it was a gray rat snake at first) he seen the rattles come up & realized what we had. The car coming up behind us almost got it at that point so Mike & I got it bagged & brought it home to decide where the best place to let it go would be.
We have Kingsnakes but have never dealt with hot snakes. My question is...do any of you helpful herpers know of anyone in Hernando County (Spring Hill) area that would take care of this beautiful snake for us? I do not want it destroyed! Just relocated.
Lastly...it looks very skinny for this time of year. It should be fat & getting ready for the winter. It doesn't look "bad" but still not fat & happy like it should be. What do ya think?

Any help would be appreciated. TerriBerri69@aol.com

The *best* thing for the snake would be to take it back where you found it and release it within a few meters of where it was collected, as soon as it is possible for you to release it.

I know you are trying to do right by the animal, but releasing it is a far better life for it than trying to habituate it to life in a cage.

Best regards,

Tom Townsend
-----
"Seek first to understand, then to be understood"

You misunderstood completely Tom. I am not going to keep it. We do not do hot snakes. We have Kingsnakes.

It was about to become roadkill when we came upon it & there were residental houses on the other side of the street. Not a good place for him to be if he wants to stay alive. 99% of the people out there would kill it at the first sign of those rattles.

All is good though. I went to the pet shop to get him a snack & was given a number to a man who lives here in Hernando County that rehabilitates & releases animals. When I got him on the phone I told him I had a rattlesnake & asked him if he destroyed animals???? He said "sorry, no, I don't kill ANY animal". THAT was MY kinda guy. He's gonna come get it & release it, so it can live a long happy life. All is good.

Thanks again.....Terri

I didn't misunderstand anything. I am perfectly able to read and comprehend that which I read. The snake should have been taken back to the spot it was collected and released. I didn't say to release it *in* the road.. I said it should be released a few meters (that means not in the exact spot where it would become roadkill) from where you collected it.

I no longer take snakes out of the wild that I do not intend to keep for "founder" breeding stock. You should feel good that you prevented the snake from being run over.
-----
"Seek first to understand, then to be understood"

To take it back & release it (ANYwhere close to where we found it) would be to take it back & release it near houses full of people. People who would take a shovel to it in a heartbeat.

I'm much happier knowing it's going to be released into the Chassahowitzka Wildlife Management Area where it will never have a run in with humans or vehicles again.

We also do not take snakes out of the wild for collecting anymore. We have a mating pair of kingsnakes that continue to give us clutches of babies every year. Six last year & eight this year. All 14 snakes have been released back out in the boonies as far from people as we could possibly get them, sometimes traveling to salt marsh islands to do so.

My thought is the farther away from people the snakes are, the better the chance that they'll survive. Any snake.

Again, thank you.

I'm sure your local relocator means well, but he might not be doing the snakes any favors. For starters, an already skinny animal has pretty much zero chance of surviving the adjustment period of high stress and erratic behavior that occurs in transplanted snakes. Even healthy animals often don't survive it. For another thing, there is a nasty little bug called Porocephalus crotali that you don't want to transmit around the local rattlesnake populations. A skinny, poorly looking snake is certainly a suspect. Fecal exams can easily detect this parasite (the adult parasites and their ova are highly distinctive under the microscope) and a checkup should have been mandatory.

Instead of saving one snake, an action like that could unfortunately be condeming a larger number of them to death. PLEASE do not relocate wildlife irresponsibly. A veterinarian really should have been involved in this process.

Controlled studies on translocated (I'll have to dig to get the citation) rattlesnakes, meaning snakes that were caught and implanted with radio telemetrics and released in an area farther than a few hundred meters from the point of original capture, show that the survival rate is EXTREMELY poor. That's why I said the snake should be release near the capture site, or not at all.

Once a snake is removed from a population, it is for all intents and purposes genetically dead to that population. In densly populated areas, removing one adult may be proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back for that species within that range. That's why it is not advisable to keep a snake that you do not intend to captive breed.

Sorry that you seem to have taken my original post on this topic so far out of its meaning. Giving the snake to someone else to release, without exact collection site data, pretty well means that the snake is as dead as if it were run down in the road in the first place, unless this gentleman knows den site locations that he can place the snake in or very near....

As Porky The Pig says... that's all folks.
-----
"Seek first to understand, then to be understood"

Tom is, as usual, absolutely correct. However, snakes in that part of Florida don't den up like they do further north, so that possibility is not there.

~~Greg~~
Florida's Venomous Snakes

I don't know if I'm usually correct or not, LOL, and I have to confess that I didn't know if they were speaking of Florida Counties or Texas Counties, as my ignorance of those two states is greater than I care to admit. I do know that even here in coastal Virginia, where snakes do not tend to den in the same way that they do in the mountains, translocation is NOT advisable if you are trying to "help" the snake in question.

I believe that the stress on the snake(s) is observable in Eastern Diamondbacks in captivity... one reason why adults tend not to do very well when collected.... I have experimented on captive bred EDBs here and just rearranging cage furnishings is stressful enough in some animals that they'll stop feeding for a couple of weeks....or until I put their home(s) back in the condition they were in before I messed with them. I have moved snakes to a different part of my snake room, to give them an alternative view on the world... and this too can cause them to behave in a different, more aggitated, way for a few weeks.... Rattlesnakes are more sensitive, in my opinion, than many other species, which is one reason they are more appealing to keep than something (a burmese python perhaps???) that is only concerned with where its next meal will come from.

I find rattlers in general, with a few exceptions of course, to be almost as interested in what I'm doing as I am in what they're doing.... I could go on and on about the behaviors I have observed over the years, but I'm probably boring the tears out of most of you already.

It is good to see your name (Greg) on the message board. I have taken a fairly long leave from posting, and I can see that little has changed on the "venomous" one.... aside from the fact that some of the names have changed.... same old arguments... same old trolls.....

I'd still like toget down to Florida to hunt pygmies with you sometime... maybe you can teach me a little about Florida geography so I don't have to wonder next time if the post is about an Eastern or Western diamondback

Tom

>>Tom is, as usual, absolutely correct. However, snakes in that part of Florida don't den up like they do further north, so that possibility is not there.
-----
"Seek first to understand, then to be understood"

That was MY bad. I'm sorry.

I was talking about Florida. And indeed it is an Eastern Diamondback. One beautiful snake.

We have actually seen more of them on the salt marsh islands around here than on out hikes in the woods. That makes me feel good knowing that rare few people would take the time to boat to bug infested islands. And, the sheds & snakes we see on those islands tend to be monsters. Gotta love it.

I am in Jacksonville and am licensed to have them, and would love to take them off you hands if you wish contact me cressm3@comcast.net
thanks
Barry

forget I posted this, totally misunderstood the situation.
Barry

Sounds like the little guy might need a vet checkup before being re-released. If the habitat where he was caught is really unsuitable for re-release, a good home can be found for him. Drop by www.snakegetters.com to find out how to get veterinary help for venomous snakes in Florida.

Minor addendum - the last EDB we took in that fit that description was just north of Deland and our vet confirmed a diagnosis of pentastomids. The prognosis isn't good in cases like that, but we are experimenting with ivermectin and levamisole and at least the animal (which is in very strict quarantine!) is now eating voluntarily and seems to have a reduced parasite load. If we successfully treat this animal it will be written up, but pentastomids are amazingly tough buggers to shift.

Relocating animals too far from their capture site is not a good idea for most species. The mortality rate tends to be very high unless the snake is returned very close to the capture site. Don't just kick it out some miles down the road; you won't be doing the snake any favors and you might be doing a major disservice to the other snakes in that area if this snake does indeed have a transmissible pathogen.