For the few snake lovers...

def not as pretty as the snake I posted last week.

Yeah, but that was cheating. The vast majority of those albinos are genetically engineered these days. I've had one of those, though it was the type with the stripes that run head to tail. However, I'll see your albino and raise you a WILD-caught amelanistic speckled king that I had years ago...



...or one of my personal favorites, this Copperhead I caught in Picayune.

When I had the albino, it had lumps all down its side. I took it to a vet, and he told me it had an infection, so I had to bathe it in betadine every night. So for months, every night I would fill a container with betadine and water and soak the snake in it. Much later, I found out that the lumps were just fatty deposits that are very common in those snakes. The vet didn't know what the hell he was talking about, and I did all that for nothing.

Hognose? We used to find those suckers everywhere when I was a kid growing up in Slidell. My mom never would let me, but I had a few friends who kept a couple as pets. They were cool little snakes. Came across a few being eaten by Speckled Kings at different times. I distinctly remember walking along a trail in the woods by Fritchie Park and right on side of the trail there was one eating a Hognose. I tapped it with a stick, because I didn't realize what was going on and the King Snake spit out the part of the Hognose it had swallowed so far and took off.

I had a beautiful hognose in the 80's. Would not eat, so I had to release.

quote:

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I had a beautiful hognose in the 80's. Would not eat, so I had to release.

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Westerns will eat anything most other snakes eat, but the Eastern Hognoses I've had would ONLY eat toads. Never seen one eat anything else. At times though, some captive snakes won't eat. The Pygmy rattler is doing real well with pinkies right now. First time I fed him, which was just a few days after I got him, he ate two pinkies.
I've also never seen an Eastern Hognose that bites. We'd even try to provoke them to make them bite, and they just wouldn't do it. When my oldest son was little, I bought him a hognose and swore to him that it wouldn't bite. First time he picked it up, it chomped down on him and he never handled it again. That's when I learned Westerns are very different snakes. On the plus side, you didn't have to hunt for toads at feeding time.

LINK

Cool. At the moment, I just have a "normal" BP. Daughter has an amber corn snake.

Does he retrieve?