Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Reading posts on feeding reminded me of my lamented wild-caught male Speckled Racer from Central America. It took only two days after arrival before he was nailing pinky-mice, which I'm told is rare for this species. After a couple of years, he was handleable without biting. This species has teeth serrated on the back like a bread knife, so even though they're small, jerking a bitten finger back is a very bad idea... His final accomplishment was to begin taking frozen/thawed fuzzies. This was difficult for him since he seemed not to be able to SEE a dead mouse in his cage, but he could smell it. So he would frantically rummage around until he literally rammed head-on into the prey, and instantly snapped it up. Then he rammed it against the cage walls, top, branches, rocks- until he was convinced it was stunned enough to swallow! Quite a performance and absolutely no constriction. FWIW, purging wild caught animals for diseases isn't perfect- he died of a tapeworm that was nearly as long as he was. Wish I had him back....

Now those are some awesome snakes. I've always wanted to keep them, very hard to find though.

Kevin