So, I got me a pretty N. Mex Pine from ALT, and being a die-hard Bogertophis snob, it’s remarkable that this snake quickly became my favorite in my collection. You just have to love their beautiful pattern and body. AND the potential to become a whole heck of a lot of colubrid.
Well, a while back, this snake escaped (it’s always the favorite one, isn’t it?) from her deli cup shortly after a move to another state before I had a chance to set her up in her rack unit. I tried the masking tape traps that Don Soderberg suggests in his Corn Snake book, and by golly, those things work!
Basically, you just put strips of masking tape, sticky side up, on the floor in rooms where you think the snake might be hiding, and the snake will get stuck to, and eventually tangled in, the strip of tape, as it crawls over it. Since snakes are so thigmotropic, it’s probably best to put the bulk of your tape strips along walls or floorboards and in or near corners.
Here she is, as found:
And it was easy to take the masking tape off without hurting her scales or skin. (Apparently, most other tapes are too adhesive for such usage.)
I used the deli cup lid in the photo as an anchor, which worked well.
The remarkable thing is, we actually caught two snakes with the tape, including a 4-foot lineaticollis that I didn’t even know was missing!! I had a roommate when this happened, and he didn’t tell me that he had been missing his snake for over three months when I moved in.
I have a respectable snake book collection, like a lot of us, and I had never seen a chapter dedicated solely to recovering escaped snakes before Don’s Corn book…I think it’s the most valuable chapter in that book.
