Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I caught a wild non-venomous snake (I have a post asking for ID on another forum), and I have a sort of medical question...

You know how a snake's eyes cloud up when it's ready to shed? Well, this one is NOT ready to shed, but one eye is clouded up like that - it looks like the eye cover didn't come off at the last shed. I can see movement under the cover so I think there's a perfectly good eyeball underneath it, and I'd like to do the snake a favor before I let it go under my deck.

I tried very gently to slide the cover off with my fingertip and even fingernail, but no luck - it seems to be fairly well affixed to the skin surrounding the eye socket. There's a slight old injury on the ridge above the eye socket (sort of a notch in the ridge) and that may be a contributing factor, but I don't think so because the skin seems to be attached all around - I don't see any gaps. Maybe this isn't all that unusual and will just clear up at the next shedding, but I've never seen such a thing.

Anyone have advice or suggestions?

Oh yeah, it would be nice if you could ID it from the attached photo too! Yes, I already have it posted on the "what kind?" forum...

try to put a drop of mineral oil on the eye, its probably just an eye cap, happens to my snakes once in a while (just try not to get it in the mouth, makes the next poop a big old mess) then after its soaked a little while you can usually work the eye cap off pretty easy
if there is an old wound near the eye that may have lead to the eye cap or not, would have to see a better pic and then still may not know
as far as id, im no good with US snakes, havent gotten out in the wild enough, i like to surf the internet with AC!
glad to hear your going to let the wild guy go, thanks for helping him out!
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hanging out under heat lights burns up my brain cells!!

Thanks for the advice Po, I'll try it out! I really don't think that old injury has anything to do with it since the cap seems to be attached all the way around, and the injury is really just a notch on the upper ridge. But we'll see how the mineral oil thing goes - I held onto the snake last night in the hopes that someone would come up with something, and you did.

I've started a bit of a debate over on the "what kind of snake?" forum with this one. The experts agree that it's definitely a rat snake, but no one is certain exactly what kind. It looks more like a Texas rat than a gray or black, but grays and blacks are native to this part of Tennessee and I'm too far outside the range for a Texas. People are starting to think that maybe it's the offspring of an escapee/released Texas and a local black or gray, but who knows?