The local Bi-Lo supermarket had a good deal on fresh wild-caught Salmon fillets today if you have a Bi-Lo discount card, so I picked one up for the Water Snakes. Some of these guys are recently wild-caught, and I had not tried them on anything other than live large Shiners, so I was eager to see how they'd handle a piece of fish instead of the whole thing. Of course, my long-term captives tore right into them, even my hypo Banded who is gravid and in deep shed. The two normal Banded girls and the male Red-Belly were a bit hesitant at first, sorta like, "but where's its HEAD?" They'd grab a piece of fish and then spit it out, then try again, until they figured it out. Once they got a piece going down, though, there was no turning back! The only snakes that would not take a piece of fish were the gravid female Red-Belly, the Brown and my "crack-baby" Eastern Garter, though I wasn't surprised that the Brown refused. I've only been able to get him to eat live fish, and I'm fortunate to get him to eat at all, since I've found that species to be problematic feeders in general.

First up, the little female Banded(x Red-Belly?)-the Midland has already eaten as you can see by her bulging belly, lol.


The next shows the male Red-Belly in sequence, eating a Salmon strip. What's so neat is that if you look closely, especially in the second and third pics, you can see the enlarged "fang" at the rear of his mouth.





pitbulllady