Reptile & Amphibian Forums

ok, so one of my best friends got an acre of land thats almost like a junkyard loaded with boards and junk to flip everywere along with almost 20 cars and boats on his property , and right on the edge of the woods in south jersey too .
they have occasional racers and black rats come into there yard and they used to find skinks and fence lizards on there property . theres a nice baseball field sized area of woods that connects his property to the woods . this is were i release any box turtles that are still alive that i find on the roads down there . ok now after you heard me babble enough.i was thinking of bringing a trashbag full of old rat/mice bedding from my breeder/feeders and taking handfulls and puttig it under certain boards and spots to maybee see if it attracts anything out of the woods . i mean it could possible work better than nothing under them boards , ya know? and just about all the snakes i find down there throughout the year are on the prowl and always out so i guess its worth a shot right ? they find blackrat skin around a few of there sheds ,trailers and campers . maybee tehre already there i just dont know ? i never do any night cruising eather , maybee thats worth another shot too
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1.0 Amelanistic greatplains ratsnake
0.1 Greatplains ratsnake
0.1 Amelanistic Cornsnake
0.1 Virginia cornsnake
1.1 Everglades Ratsnake
0.1 Greenish ratsnake
1.1 Texas Ratsnake
0.1 Black ratsnake
1.1 Speckled kingsnake
1.0 abberant northwestern garter
0.1 Oregon Red sided gartersnake
1.0 Leopard Gecko
1.0 green iguana
and a bangin @ss drumset

Ryan for releasing box turtles there..thats not a good idea. I would release the boxies were you find them. One box turtle population can carry disease that another one is not immune to. I've seen boxies from different populations get RI infection like this. Also there homing instinct is going to bring them right back to where they came from...possibly getting hit by a car in the process or stressing them. It is nice of you to do that however, but the best thing is just find some nice woods in the direction they are heading and set them free there.

I lost my sinaloan milk snake one time and he showed up a week later 60 feet away in my detached garage on top of my mice tank looking down at my feeder mice. A neighbors snake got loose and I found him in my disposed mice bedding(wood shavings) near my garage.Snakes can pick up that sent a long way off and follow it upwind to the food source.

Also if box turtles are released into a new area they will most likely leave to try and find their way back to their original home. Box turtles sometimes will stay in the new area if the are hibernated/brumated for 2 winters/years in an out door enclosure close to the new release site. Ten they may stay in the same area. And anyway also it is not a good idea because the box turltes that currently reside in the area have hard enough time competing for food and their is a good possible chance of introducing a new disease to the current resident box turtle population. dave

Just for the heck of it, you could also try leaving a trail with that bedding from deep in the woods to that area where the boards are. just a thought.

I bet the scent trail is just as good and maybe better.They can smell mice and just follow the scent trail just like they smell a female at breeding time.I found a eastern milk female one spring under a fridge door and 90 mins later i checked the same AC and there was a male.

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~ø¿ô~Doug

I tried it this year w/ limited success. I set out some boards in what looked like pristine snake environment @ the bottom of a ravine. They yielded nothing but lizards. I also baited tins in the area where I find Kings, but the King I found there this year was away from my traps in a trash pile left by the neighbors house. I'm guessing the relative newness of the boards and the dry climate had something to do w/ the fact that I didn't find that much. Some rain and the fact that I've let them set out undisturbed for over a year should yield a more favorable result.

reako45