Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey first time poster on this sight thought i'd share my find.

This little guy just about had his life end. it was the middle of the night and i was riding my motorcycle and was going down the street to my house and saw this snake in the road, i swerved and thought i had hit him i turned around and saw him all bunched up and though omg i ran him over, i picked him up and took him home and with some serious luck i didn't hit him and so now he is in my house living large. I didn't know how he survived as long as he did outside we have cats galore all around so i thought i'd keep him and raise him. anyway enjoy!

Really nice! What part of California did you find him? The Cal I keep is WC too! Awesome the way they just become docile and acclimate to captivity.

reako45

Actually i caught him in Utah, lol. Now i was just in Cali for several weeks and i found a field collectors heaven out where my father lives near Mojave. rats, kings, bulls, rattlers they were all over, along with lizards and a baby desert tortoise. infact the first snake i came across was a huge rat snake that was golden yellow and it was hunting down a baby rabbit, unfortunately i scared the rabbit away, that's how i noticed him cause he started rattling his tail in the bushes trying to sound like a rattler lol love it when they do that. take it easy!

Most of us don't get a chance to see things in the field or at least very often. It's nice to imagine it after hearing it first hand. Hope you guys realize how lucky you are!
Bob.

A rat snake in the Mojave? What part of Cali were you in? For the past 3 weeks I've been hunting the western(?) edge of the Mojave and seen lots of Mojave Greens, Gophers and Glossies, but no kings and certainly no rats.

reako45

Actually i wish i had taken a picture of it, i might head back up there, i know where his den is, The place i was snake hunting was north of baker a town called ridgecrest, my father works at the naval base there and when i went to visit him i went out snake hunting, infact his backyard is FULL of bull snakes. I have been doing some research online trying to identify the rat snake in Ridgecrest i saw, the closest thing i can find is the baja rat snake which i know it can't be, but it definately was a rat snake, i went through my snake books to identify it. infact the local petstore here has a black rat snake and except for the color they were identical. Everything i've been reading is that rat snakes in Cali seem to be quiet rare and not much is known about them, maybe i ran across something rare. lol that would have been cool, i really may have to go back and snap some shots. Well off to do some more research, now i'm really curious, look what you did to me!!!!! lol

I bet what you saw was a Coachwhip. There are no ratsnakes native to California except possibly the Baja Rat which is thought by some to possibly occur in extreme southern California near the border.
Coachwhips are large diurinal snakes fairly common in the desert. They come in variable colors, yellow, tan, black and even pink and red or combinations of those. Often the front half is one color and the back half another but sometimes they are all one color. As juvenilles they have a yellow and brown blotched pattern similar to a gophersnake. The juvenille pattern fades into the adult coloration as they mature and sometimes blotching remains in the neck region.

A Coluber constrictor mormon - Western Yellow-bellied Racer. Now those are in the region and the scales and scale texture are exactly like the one i found, so that is probably the snake i saw. if anyone is interested i found this website that talks alot about and shows the snakes and the areas they are native to.

http://www.californiaherps.com/snakes/snakesmaps.html

Enjoy!

I use to catch a lot of those.
They are a dwarf subspecies of racer, and do not get very long. The specimens I had fed readily on rodents, but supposedly some will only take lizards. Baby's eat insects, and are spotted. Anal plate divided.
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3.0 WC; 0.1 CB L. getula californiae
0.1 CB L. pyromelana pyromelana
0.1 WC; 10 eggs (7/11) Elgaria multicarinata multicarinata

Concerning the rat snake, i know this isn't it but i was browsing the rat snakes on the KS photo gallery and even though this coxi reigns around the rainforest it's color except for the black is exactly what it looked like and what i found was an adult.

this link is from MGLs pics

http://gallery.pethobbyist.com/index.php?photo=286808