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View Full Version : my friend "sticky"


MAC
09-28-2004, 02:01 AM
for, cw, RiZZ and all you other perverts I don't mean my cream weasel.....

no, I mean a snake of course!...hmmmm...anyway....

today while extracting some broken 3/8-16 SS bolts that had been broken off in both the band saw blade guides which I built for my Grob 6V-36 (http://www.grobinc.com/6v_36.htm) 15000FPM bandsaw one of the guys brought me a wad of packing tape.....with a juvenile eastern hognose snake trapped inside!!!!

She was stuck from her little pointy nose to her teeny tiny tail!

with a few minutes and some vegetable oil I was able to free the little gal

http://mac.cookingwithdiesel.net/images/snakes/hognose/eastern%20hognose/juvenile%20092704/hognose_092704_01.JPG

cool looking huh?

http://mac.cookingwithdiesel.net/images/snakes/hognose/eastern%20hognose/juvenile%20092704/hognose_092704_02.JPG

got alot of red in her right now. That will probably fade as she gets older. (some of them turn almost completely jet black)

http://mac.cookingwithdiesel.net/images/snakes/hognose/eastern%20hognose/juvenile%20092704/hognose_092704_03.JPG

but now the fun begins.
these animals are active during the day time, burrowing in the leaves and woodpiles looking for toads and frogs who are sleeping....so they can eat them!!!!

To keep such an animal in captivity you have to catch a few toads and frogs (possibly lizards) and rub them on dead mice. eventually the snake will eat a mouse that smells like a toad. After a few of these it should start eating mice. Its very rare, even for animals bred in captivity to parents who have eaten mice all their life, for a baby to be born eating mice. They instinctively look for toads.

why?
that's the evolutionary magic of hognose snakes!

They have a cantilevered set of teeth in th eback of their mouth. When they grab a hold of a toad and start to swallow him he puffs up so he'll be too big to swallow. The hognose pushes down these special teeth which puncture the toad and he "deflates"

....some species of hognose are also well documented to secrete a neurotoxin for stunning the toad...so techinically they are "venomous"

this is something you should know and understand before messing with them I guess.

http://mac.cookingwithdiesel.net/images/snakes/hognose/eastern%20hognose/nose-to-nose.JPG
(sorry this pic is fuzzy I took it a few years ago with another snake by holding the camera out at arms length and snapping away without looking)

just one more cool snake lurking where I live and work waiting for me to learn about it!!

cw_
09-29-2004, 09:46 PM
You said 'swallow'.

Cool pics.

ms. bing
09-29-2004, 10:53 PM
eva really enjoyed looking at this thread with me.

btw, if you need any toads, my kitten keeps dragging them into the laundry room to play with them to death. i go in there in the morning to feed her and find them gasping for breath next to the dryer.
she's gonna be a good kitty!