Something interesting happened this evening and I would like to hear if anybody else here has observed female garters behaving this way.

As one or two of you may know, I can divide one of my enclosures into two parts. I had temporarily housed all females (2 vagrans, 1 tetrataenia) in one half and the male vagrans in the other. Tonight I moved the male to an enclosure of its own and took down the wall that had previously separated the females from the male.

That's when the vagrans females flipped out.

They started rubbing their cloacas all over the place. Against the substrate, the walls, the water dish, the fake plants, even the glass doors. I'm not kidding. Both vagrans females started doing it, but not the tetrataenia. Seriously, they behaved a lot like courting males. Jerky movements, they arced their tails (they didn't lift them like they do when they're about to defecate) and when one of them was busy rubbing itself against the glass, I noticed that the cloaca was wide open. In fact, I could have sworn that I saw light at the other end. I tried to film it, but they stopped every time I got close enough.

For a moment I was freaking out, thinking they were having seizures, but it started the minute I took down the wall and they seemed to have complete control over it and they stopped doing it when I fed them. So it must have something to do with the scent of the male in the area they didn't have access to before.

Just when you think you've got the snakes figured out, they come up with something new.