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TIMES-DISPATCH (Richmond, Virginia) 06 September 04 Hungry serpent eats wooden egg - Chesterfield veterinarian helps the injured wildlife, one black rat snake at a time (Rex Springston)
To a snake in a henhouse, apparently everything tastes like chicken.
A black rat snake looking for eggs in Marsha Peterson's chicken house ate a wooden "dummy" egg instead.
Peterson, of Fluvanna County, responded not with a hoe but with compassion. She took the 4½-foot snake to a vet.
The way Peterson sees it, she was partly to blame. Her real and fake eggs enticed the snake away from earning its living the hard way.
"It's much easier to swallow an egg than wrestle a rat," she said.
A snake can open its jaws wide to swallow big things, but the process doesn't always work in reverse.
The wooden egg was so big the snake could not cough it up or pass it. If the egg remained, the snake would slowly starve.
Peterson uses dummy eggs to entice her hens to lay in the proper nests. She knew a dummy egg was lodged inside the snake, because she squeezed the serpent's bulge, and the egg didn't break.
She hauled the animal to Dr. Joanne Baldwin, owner of Cardinal Animal Hospital near Huguenot and Robious roads in Chesterfield County.
Baldwin operated on the snake last week.
She anesthetized it, then made a 1½-inch incision on its side, in a thread-thin area of skin where the snake's bottom scales meet its side scales.
She cut through the skin, then through the muscle layer, through the outer lining of the snake's intestine and then through the inner lining.
"Then you pop the egg out and go back the other way," Baldwin said.
She repaired the cuts with sutures that would disintegrate inside the snake. She sealed the outer incision with tissue glue.
In her office Friday, Baldwin gave the snake a final examination while her assistant, Stephanie Foard, held it with leather gloves.
The snake was back to being its ornery self, releasing a foul-smelling musk that it uses to repel attackers.
"He's an ungrateful cur," said Baldwin, 58. The vet has a sense of humor sharper than a serpent's tooth. For the occasion, she wore a shirt decorated with brown and gray chickens.
Baldwin proclaimed the snake fit and said she would release it this weekend on her wooded property in Goochland County.
Does a snake really deserve so much compassion? Heavens yes, said Baldwin and Peterson.
Many people wrongly fear and kill snakes, which are important elements of nature, they said.
"This animal was here first, and I happened to move in," said Peterson, 57, who raises pet chickens on 11 acres in Fluvanna.
If you see a snake and don't like it, Baldwin said, "just walk away."
The black rat snake - often called simply the blacksnake - is a harmless reptile so named because it usually prefers rodents to wooden eggs.
Over the past decade, however, Baldwin successfully has operated on four blacksnakes that Peterson brought in after they ate dummy eggs.
One snake ate three plastic eggs and a marble egg. Another ate two plastic eggs and a wooden apple.
Baldwin operated on the snakes because Peterson is a friend. She prefers to care for pets, not wild animals.
Baldwin suggested that people who find injured wildlife call the Area Rehabbers Klub, or ARK, at (804) 598-8380.
Why would snakes eat artificial eggs, anyway?
"I guess they are not that bright," Baldwin said, adding, "it probably smells like chicken."
Hungry serpent eats wooden egg

As always an interesting article - thanks again for posting Wes. I don't any of us thank you often enough for sharing these clippings with us.
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Matt Campbell
Animal Keeper, Small Mammal/Reptile House
Lincoln Park Zoo Chicago, Illinois

Assistant Curator
Wildlife Discovery Center at Elawa Farm
Lake Forest, Illinois

What makes me happy about this wonderful story happing in Virginia, is that not too long ago an article was posted about a young girl in Va. that made news of her killing a snake with her dad's gun. "She thought it was fun". I'm sure you guys remember that article from the "Richmond Times Dispatch" I think Doorgunner has that story posted in the photo archives. Have a link to that story below. Now this story somewhat saves face for my home state LOL I need to meet this woman and shake her hand.

Steve
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