Pitchfire
05-16-2012, 11:02 AM
Background first. My uncle taught me about snakes when I was 7 in Az. He bet me a California Kingsnake and a sidexside shotgun that I wouldn't eat his parrots peppers and I won 'em. I grew up flipping boards all over with a father in the Air Force. So from Hawaiian Blind Snakes to rattlers, gopher snakes and of course garters aplenty, I always had my hands full.
Fast forward 30 years and now my daughter wants a snake here in Southeast Alaska. So although we have a 15 gallon tank for starters and a 60 watt che heater etc... we would like to get the most suitable species for the environment and all that it offers. So species of the Northwest particularly interest us particularly Sirtalis (fitchi, parietalis, pickeringii, & concinnus) and Elegans vagrans. We read on the snakes of B.C. website that Elegans Vagrans, the wandering garter, has the most varied diet in the wild, a mild toxin, and constrictor like tendencies. So we have favored the Wandering, but are open to constructive criticism regarding our logic.
We would very much like to feed a varied diet (although we realize it may be difficult or impossible) of local foods (worms, slugs, newts, insects, fish, krill etc...). So we want all the chance we can get that it will work.
There has been a now lost specimen collected not too incredibly far from here, (species of garter undetermined). It would be fun to find the first proven claim to a snake in Alaska! 50 miles upriver from here... My guess in the snake was a valley or wandering given the B.C. range maps. I would like to have a distant cousin to meet them if I ever succeeded.
So we have very high humidity and moderate temps like Seattle (never goes below 0degF here and rarely out of the 70's on the high side). Of course inside the temperature is somewhat irrelevant though the humidity and daylight hours will be more of a factor.
Thoughts?
Fast forward 30 years and now my daughter wants a snake here in Southeast Alaska. So although we have a 15 gallon tank for starters and a 60 watt che heater etc... we would like to get the most suitable species for the environment and all that it offers. So species of the Northwest particularly interest us particularly Sirtalis (fitchi, parietalis, pickeringii, & concinnus) and Elegans vagrans. We read on the snakes of B.C. website that Elegans Vagrans, the wandering garter, has the most varied diet in the wild, a mild toxin, and constrictor like tendencies. So we have favored the Wandering, but are open to constructive criticism regarding our logic.
We would very much like to feed a varied diet (although we realize it may be difficult or impossible) of local foods (worms, slugs, newts, insects, fish, krill etc...). So we want all the chance we can get that it will work.
There has been a now lost specimen collected not too incredibly far from here, (species of garter undetermined). It would be fun to find the first proven claim to a snake in Alaska! 50 miles upriver from here... My guess in the snake was a valley or wandering given the B.C. range maps. I would like to have a distant cousin to meet them if I ever succeeded.
So we have very high humidity and moderate temps like Seattle (never goes below 0degF here and rarely out of the 70's on the high side). Of course inside the temperature is somewhat irrelevant though the humidity and daylight hours will be more of a factor.
Thoughts?