Slithery, Come Home!

[ffutures]

As some regular readers will know I keep corn snakes.

Back in May, due to some bad planning on my part, they laid a lot of eggs, and like an idiot (because there are already way too many normal-coloration corn snakes in Britain) I incubated them to term and reared them.

Flash forward to August, when one escaped and vanished, apparently forever since this house was built in 1815 and has more holes than the average Swiss cheese. Tried various ways of luring it back, without success. I assumed that it'd vanished under the floorboards, never to return, or gone down to the flat below and ended up inside a cat.

Today I had a call from downstairs; they'd just found a snake in the garden, and was it one of mine? Went down and it was, of course, a young and apparently healthy corn snake, a little smaller than the ones I've been rearing but apparently OK. They think that they may have caught a glimpse of it zipping across the floor inside their flat the previous evening, but they aren't sure. Since corns that size are pretty well camouflaged and move like greased lightning that isn't particularly surprising.

My guess is that up until Tuesday, when my central heating broke down, it was living somewhere in my flat. Once things got cold it moved downstairs in search of warmth, then got outside to get away from the cats. To do this it went down two floors, then up several steps to the garden, then (apparently) got so cold that it was only moving sluggishly when found, which is why I had time to zip down and capture it.

Anyway, I don't think it's injured so I've fed it and put it into the incubator with the other babies. Hopefully it'll be OK.

They really ought to make the movie...

Comments

[ouatic-7.livejournal.com]

Awww. That's such a sweet and touching story.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

What worries me is that it doesn't look particularly malnourished, which suggests it's been finding baby mice somwehere.

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

"Born Freeeeeee! Freeee as the Wiiiind!"

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

So see? Having the heat go out was a good thing! It flushes out your snakes. Maybe you should make it an annual treat!

Corn snakes eat bugs too, don't they? Maybe you don't have mice: maybe you've got delicious roaches.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I wish! It'd be a damn sight cheaper to feed them. The general theory is that the food of choice for really small corn snakes is young anoles, teeny lizards. Not exactly common in London, which is why they get baby mice.