I'm usually wicked busy and hardly have time to post as much as I'd like but I was just tending some of my sighthunters and contemplating their virtues, and got the bug to share with fellow racer and coachwhip fans feelings most of you probably already have.
I have a pair of Southern Black Racers I got last summer as hatchlings so I could refine my skills in conditioning hatchling racers for display. I used to keep Northern Black Racers years ago and I noticed that they do calm down if they have no choice, and can be displayed to the public. My Southern Blacks took the predictable amount of time and nail-biting (me, not them) to take them from live small frogs and snakes to live, then scented defrosted small mice and finally to unscented mice. The female decided long ago that the forceps I use to present food are actually some kind of large creature which is holding her food and she needs to get the food away from it. She advances on the forceps when the cage is opened (she can see the forceps holding the food through the clear panel on her cage front and gets excited even before the cage opens) and tries to tear the dead mouse away from the forceps. Half the time, she thrashes the mouse violently, like a terrier with a rat. She smacks her head against the sides of her cage so hard I worry she'll give herself a headache. Sometimes, her teeth tear the skin of the dead mouse and then there is the whole guts issue---bleah. She eats it anyway--mmmmmmm, mouse guts--my favorite!
The male is more shy and still insists on live small mice most of the time. He likes to periscope from one end of his hide bark, keeping the first six inches or so of his body vertical for hours as he watches people outside his cage. I was thinking about the wonderful things Indigos do and I decided that racers are just as neat in their own ways. The racer habit of periscoping is pretty cool--I've seen wild ones doing it from hiding places among boulders in grasslands and along streambanks. Snakes are so stealthy it's a wonder we see any, and with something like 10,000 muscles they can hold position for hours or slip into hiding like living smoke. Fascinating.
And that satin patina, that lustre as light flows over them when they move (which they do ceaselessly), is different from the patent-leather sheen of other snakes. I wonder what adaptive value their unique scale surface conveys? Many snakes live in grass and open country. Is the surface of a racer merely the Racer answer to structural demands associated with moving quickly and precisely over open ground, or do they have some advantage over other surface-active snakes like Bullsnakes and Garters? It's almost as if racers have the matte finish of keeled-scaled snakes without the keeled scales. Hmmmm.
I also have a pair of hatchling Blue Racers, who showed uncharacteristic mercy by eating defrosted pink mice right away. They are only a few months old but they already show no fear of the forceps and seem to think of forceps - and me - as mere vehicles for food. All my sighthunters get a warm spot over 100 degrees so they can capture heat for activity and metabolism, and my racers and coachwhips usually digest a meal in a day or two.
Of course, being racers they still have to go all Rambo every time they get startled. They fling themselves around the cage, and even more fun is when I have to put my hand in there to clean. The female Southern Black Racer is very territorial, as are the adult Western Coachwhips, so anything in the cage is an intruder and will be dealt with accordingly. I don't ask them if they want a piece of me, since I know they will answer yes--and then take it. Or maybe skip the answer part.
Last spring, a friend and I were trying to collect an adult wild Blue Racer for photos and measurements. The snake tolerated us for a few minutes, then took off. We both went after it and headed it off, at which point it decided to face us. Uh-oh. Rearing and striking, it held us off until I got a hand on it--and paid, of course. Humans love to tell themselves how they are the pinnacle of the Cosmos, but the way I see it, two six-foot tall men were held at bay by a five-foot racer for several minutes--40 ounces of indomitable reptile faced down 350 pounds of monkey meat, and the outcome was far from certain. Wildlife will tell you (and if you don't believe it, they are happy to demonstrate), size doesn't always matter as much as we like to think it does. Brains, either.
No denying boas are beautiful, big pythons are impressive, milk snakes are colorful, rat snakes are personable (sometimes), but there is a spirit in racers and coachwhips that will not submit, a majesty bound up in life expressed as a spine with a calculating mind at one end. When racers and coachwhips are watching you, they're sizing you up. I get the feeling they always reach the same conclusion: "I bet I could get his head in my mouth."
