Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Okay. A fellow came into the pet store at which I work today with a garter snake he found on the back of his apple truck from Pennsylvania. I live in WV. He wanted to find a home for it, and I said I'd take it with the intention of letting it go in my barn figuring it's a wild snake, and the wild is where it needs to be. However, he' acting oddly. All I know about garter snake behavior I learned from captive bred ones at my store, so if this is normal mid-autumn behavior let me know.

He's very sluggish, and mostly unrespinsive. When I pick him up hhe holds his head steady, but his back end just kind of droops loosely. He was totally uninterested in the food I offered (a few small goldfish in a bowl...which is what the snakes at work eat...and two crickets, based on a suggestion I had heard a few years ago from someone who bred snakes.) I left him in there with an undertank heater and a lamp (on one side to give him a healthy gradient) and the food for about three hours. When I come back he's curled up on the cooler side, still mostly unresponsive. When I originally put him in the tank, he was very interested in drinking the water but shortly thereafter he seemed to just fall asleep in it! I was worried he'd drowned, but when I picked him up he was still the same.

So, do I have a sick snake that needs my help before releasing him, or should I let him go tomorrow in the (fairly) safe shelter of my barn, which is populated with a number of garter snakes (the only info I can find about their hibernation behavior is that they like to sleep in groups!). He is the same species as the garter snakes in the barn. Trying to take him back to his original home is impossible, as I don't know where in PA he came from, or even if he had perhaps snuck onto the truck earlier! So those are really my only two options.

Oh! Perhaps a few other pieces of relavent data: He's about a foot to eighteen inches long, seems to be well fed (as in, not emaciated), and spent most of the day in the other fellow's coat pocket, for which I don't blame the guy as it was probably the warmest place he had to keep him until he found a place that may know what to do with him...IE, my store.

Thanks so much for any and all help!

this time of the year snakes go into hibernation....some will do that even when kept warm. get rid of the crickets, not a food item for garters. also, releasing him in a different state is more than likely illegal. it can introduce diseases and parasites that local snakes have never been exposed to. not a good thing to do. the snake probably needs to be kept in a cage with no food for 2 weeks to make sure the intestinal tract is free of food. then he needs to be put in a cool area, 40-50 degrees for a month or so to simulate hibernation. needs to have water available also. after that he can be warnmed up and will start to feed. if you are unable to keep the snake you can check on here for someone in your area that will rescue him and on thamnophis.com for someone also.

He ended up dying that night. The way he was holding his back end made myself and my father believe he had some kind of spinal injury. He's now buried in our little animal cemetary in the backyard.

You did what you could.. Kudos for that
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Regards,
Wayne A. Harvey
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sorry he died. Good job trying to save him!!!

Thank you, both of you. I'm sure he's in a nice, warm place in the sky now.