Reptile & Amphibian Forums

my friend caught this snake in his back yard when he was cutting the grass. he thought it was dead but when he picked it up it moved. its about 5-7 inches long maybe a little longer.

i put it in little critter keeper with some aspen shavings and it stays hidden under the substrate.

i tried looking up native snakes but there are a bunch tht this one kinda looks like.

im planning on keeping it at least for a little while maybe longer if its not hard to keep.

it was caught in louisiana on the west bank of the mississippi river in harvey, louisiana. it was in a busy part of a neighborhood in the back yard of a house my friend said has has seen a few others like this one. anyone know what it could be?

i almost forgot heres a pic.

storia brown snake
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Archie Bottoms

Definitely a Brownsnake (Storeria dekayi).

They sometimes will eat earthworms and even crickets in captivity, but they aren't the most "satisfactory" captives.
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

Unless you have a lot of experience keeping wild caught snakes , do it and your self a favor and let it go !!!! Or it will most likely die , mostly from stress. David

Dekays snakes tend to be hiders/burrowers, in gardens and leaf litter, dining as already noted on worms and insects. Because of that your snake will need appropriate habitat, into which he will disappear most of the time, so it will look like you are keeping an enclosure full of dirt. Hence he won't be visible unless you excavate for him, even if he feeds -- which you won't be able to tell anyway, since feeding for these snakes goes on out of sight. Part ofthe fun of keeping any snake is to watch it move about and eat, which you really can't get with these guys. I would second the advice to release it and if you want s snake pursue one of the old reliables like corns, kings or rats.

Whoa there on the downer assessments on keeping brown snakes! Take a look at the posts on brown snake and redbelly snake (close relative) care on the Small Terrestrial Snakes forum, particularly posts by "dekaybrown". Some keepers seem to find them to be engaging captives that can feed in the open and sometimes from the keeper's fingers. Of course their housing requirements are a little more demanding than larger snakes like the kings and rats mentioned, and they're not so simple to handle, but not as bad as some of the other posters on this thread have implied.

Billy
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Phillyherping

Not surprising. A lot of snakes have the unearned reputation of being difficult to maintain. Corals, for instance. Their habits & micro-habitat are much the same as Storeria. I kept them for many years, even having a few that would accept food items from forceps. If one is willing to put in the work to set the animal up with what it needs to feel comfortable, it's amazing what can be accomplished.

~~Greg~~