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SALISBURY POST (N Carolina) 31 August 05 Two-headed snake finds home at Dan Nicholas (Kathy Chaffin)
A man who caught a copperhead for his pet kingsnake to eat got more than he bargained for.
Bob Settle, an engineer with GDX Automotive of Heilig Road, spends about every third lunch break looking for snakes along a nearby drainage ditch. It was two weeks ago that he found the 3-foot copperhead.
He captured the poisonous snake by pinning its head down with a stick and picking it up. Settle carries a bucket or plastic bag with him at all times to secure the snakes.
That night, Settle took the copperhead into his house on East Ridge Road and put it in the cage with his 41/2-foot kingsnake.
The kingsnake, which hadn't eaten in a while, tried immediately to strangle it.
"Kingsnakes are constrictors," he says, "so as soon as I dropped it in there, the kingsnake wrapped around it three or four times and held it for an hour and a half."
During the struggle, Settle says the copperhead bit the kingsnake at least four times. He and his wife, Ann, were leaving to go somewhere, so he says he prodded the kingsnake with a stick to try to speed the process along.
"That set the copperhead crazy," he says, "and it got away."
Every few days, Settle says he'd put the copperhead back in the cage, but the kingsnake never tried to go after it again. When it wasn't in the cage, he kept the copperhead in a bucket with a top that screws shut.
This past Friday, Settle found a mouse and fed it to the kingsnake before putting the copperhead in its cage again. "After they eat, they become more aggressive," he says.
But when he opened the bucket to take the copperhead out, Settle says he saw a pile of baby copperheads.
There were 11, he says, and one of them had two heads.
"I couldn't believe it," he says. Even his wife was fascinated. "But as soon as she saw it," he says, "she said, 'No, you're not keeping it.' "
Settle called Dan Nicholas Park and talked to nature center supervisor Bob Pendergrass about his find. "He wanted it real badly," Settle says.
A two-headed snake is rare, according to Pendergrass, and will certainly be a future attraction at the center — if it survives.
Pendergrass says he's waiting before putting it on display to see if it is able to eat. Based on articles he has read, he says two-headed snakes sometimes end up starving to death.
"They're constantly fighting over food," he says, "so neither one gets to eat. We just have to play that by ear.
"Being a copperhead, it's going to be a little more touchy."
Typically, baby snakes don't even try to eat until they're a week or so old.
According to a 2002 article in National Geographic, there can be other problems with two-headed snakes. Because they rely so much on smell, one head will sometimes catch the scent of a prey on the other and try to swallow it.
"It could do well and live for years," Pendergrass says. "Or it could die the first time it tries to eat."
The two-headed snake, about 6 inches long, appears to be healthy at this point.
"It's nice and chunky," he says. "It's not a thin, little animal like some newborn snakes can be, but that can all change overnight."
After observing the snake, Pendergrass says it appears that one head may be dominant. That could increase its chances of surviving, he says, because the dominant head is likely to end up with the food.
"That particular head is sticking its tongue out and checking out the world," he says. "The other head is just kind of hanging there, like it's just along for the ride."
Pendergrass says the two-headed snake is a remarkable animal. "I certainly plan to get some pictures of it and send them to different places to make them aware of it," he says.
According to the National Geographic article, two-headed snakes form like Siamese twins do in humans. A developing embryo will start to split into identical twins, but stops before they're completely divided.
Though there are no statistics for survival rates in snakes, the article says 75 percent of human conjoined twins are stillborn or die within 24 hours.
Two-headed snakes kept in captivity sometimes live long lives and even have babies.
A two-headed kingsnake found as a baby lived 17 years in captivity at Arizona State University, according to the article, and Thelma and Louise, a two-headed corn snake at the San Diego Zoo, had 15 normal babies before it died.
Though Settle's kingsnake still continues to refuse to try to eat the grown copperhead, he says it ate the 10 babies "one right after the other."
"Some people don't like the idea of them being food," he says, "but that's just the natural progression of things."
As for the remaining copperhead, Settle says his wife has given him an ultimatum. If the kingsnake doesn't eat it Tuesday night, she told him he had to get rid of it, one way or the other.
"I can't count a copperhead as one of my pets," he says.
In addition to his kingsnake, Settle has a ball python and blacksnake. He has to keep them in separate cages, though, or the kingsnake will try to eat them.
Pendergrass has also promised to give Settle another kingsnake and a corn snake.
More snakes means Settle will have to look even harder for food.
He stopped recently and asked one woman if he could check around her barn for snakes. "She said to help myself," he says.
Settle also continues to look for snakes on his lunch break. He's found three so far this year.
When Pendergrass told him that North Carolina's largest copperhead on record came from the Heilig Road area, Settle says it made him wish he had measured one he found earlier this summer. He says it might have broken the 49-inch-long record holder.
Settle also carries containers in his car so he can pick up snakes along the roads.
He admits to catching a lot of teasing at work. His co-workers call him "the Snake Man" or "Snake."
"And everybody says I'm crazy," he says, laughing. "They say my wife's even worse for putting up with me."
Settle, now 53, has been fascinated with snakes since he was a boy growing up in Dayton, Ohio. "I used to chase my sisters with them," he says.
Two-headed snake finds home at Dan Nicholas
