Since I mentioned my Nerodia in my introductory thread, I figured I might as well go ahead and start a thread to show them off! Since I can only post six photos per post, I'll have to break this up into several posts, highlighting different snakes.

I guess I'll start out with my Nerodia fasciatas. I've got three, all girls, although one, the most-recently acquired(last week)might be a N. fasciata x N. erythrogaster intergrade.

The first girl is an adult N. fasciata pictiventris, wild-collected in Florida this past March. I bought her out of a tub of several Water Snakes at a reptile show in Columbia, SC, in March, for a whopping $10.00. She was destined, along with the others, to become food for captive King Cobras. This is pretty much what most herpers think of Water Snakes-that they aren't good for anything but feeders. She is a hypomelanistic, though I don't know if her gene is co-dominant or recessive; I guess I'll get a better idea once she drops her babies. She is gravid, apparently having got bred either right before she was collected, or by one of the males in the tub with her at the show. She is in what I believe is her "pre-birthing" shed now. I have never had a gentler, calmer snake. She has never struck, thrashed, musked or bit, not even after I had to remove a stuck eye cap or after being given a preventative dose of Flagyl. She is one of the snakes that I take to presentations for kids, since she's so gentle that even kids who are afraid of snakes quickly warm up to her and want to hold her.





Next is a female I've only had for a couple of weeks. The guy who caught her in Lexington County, SC, called me while still in the swamp on his cell phone and wanted to know if I wanted a "big, mean-*** Banded" that was "guaranteed to bite". Sure, why not?
I guess his idea of "mean" is very different from MINE, lol. This snake has not struck or bitten, not once. She was a little squirmy, and would flattened out the first couple of times I picked her up, but once she figured out I wasn't going to eat her, she has calmed right down. I'm not sure if she is gravid or not; she looks pretty chunky, but she doesn't have that "feel' that my definite-gravid girls have, so she could just be fat. She is a typical Southern Banded Water Snake from South Carolina, though I don't think she's ugly by any means.




pitbulllady