Be careful what you wish for...many mouths to feed now! Lol

So we had a real shocker last night.

A little background, I keep all kinds of critters here and my kids are exactly like that as well. We are a house of pets...not just fury ones. WE have tortoises, salamanders, snakes etc and actively breed them. Any how...it not like we don't have any snakes here, but still my son wanted to keep a garter snake as a pet. We had found it while moving the woodpile last week in preparation for winter. It was in between the logs. I agreed he could keep it, take care of it etc. These are easy snakes to raise and its a little one, maybe 16 " . They eat worms,slugs, small fish and frogs. So we set up a tank. A few days latter we found another.. and again the question can we keep it. its about the same size, I told him he could keep it a few days and then decide which one he wanted to keep.

At this size its hard to sex them, but of course after having bred rat snakes, Ethan starts with "wouldnt it be great if they bred Dad?" I shared a story with him about when I was his age, had a garter snake I found and kept with out my mom's approval. Little did I know it was a female and she had 22 babies...I found out then hard way that these are small snakes as babies...They got right through the screen lid and I got royally in trouble with my mom!:) He got a kick out of the story and we left it at that.

Last night he yells out..."Dad the garter snake had babies!" I honestly thought he was kidding. Its really late for baby garters here. Theres really not enough time to get enough food before winter, usually they have the babies a little earlier. But there they were. 11 baby snakes wiggling around the tank. She had 15 , but four were still born.

Sometimes in colder areas live bearing snakes will over winter with their babies inside, and have them in the spring. That may have been what she intended, either that or it was just a late hatch.. Either way I have to laugh as Ethan got his wish.. His snake had babies! though it wasn't by mating with the other snake...these babies were probably conceived awhile ago. Whats odd is garters usually breed soon after coming out of their dens in April.


http://forum.simplydiscus.com/attach...2&d=1412093942

http://forum.simplydiscus.com/attach...1&d=1412093942

Guess we will be keeping a worm culture all winter!

-al

Thats awesome! :) Never saw a garter snake clutch before.

They are tiny..maybe 5-6 inches and less than pencil in diameter..:) Those are my 11 year old son's hands.

-al

I had the same experience as a kid.Caught a garter and kept it for a pet,remember I also fed it goldfish,would put six in a bowl and watch it go after them.Went into the basement one day,and the tank looked odd,like there was smoke moving around in there.Had 17 babies.Kept them for awhile and then took them to the forest preserves.

Nice! I think he is really hooked now! Might even out do the old man:D..... best get all the tanks set up and ready:) I think its really cool that he has those interests! Some kids don't......
Congrats to Ethan!

Ardan

Wow, I have never seen such small snakes! What an interesting story, let us know how they do.
Barb

An amazing story and great to learn more about snake. Thanks for sharing with us Al.

Trung

Wow! quite a few little ones, what is he going to do when they start multiplying.

Thanks for sharing...

They're all over the yard here, I sure don't need anymore! I don't hate snakes, but I sure don't like them. I don't mind the garters and other "good" snakes though. Funny though, I have a very stupid curiosity that I've yet to fulfill which is to see a Eastern Diamondback in the wild....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Discus-n00b

They're all over the yard here, I sure don't need anymore! I don't hate snakes, but I sure don't like them. I don't mind the garters and other "good" snakes though. Funny though, I have a very stupid curiosity that I've yet to fulfill which is to see a Eastern Diamondback in the wild....

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Probably best to do that with at least a 300mm lens :p;)

Good stuff Al. Your kids are growing up in your footsteps. Now, whether or not you consider that a good thing is still in the air, lol.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Discus-n00b

They're all over the yard here, I sure don't need anymore! I don't hate snakes, but I sure don't like them. I don't mind the garters and other "good" snakes though. Funny though, I have a very stupid curiosity that I've yet to fulfill which is to see a Eastern Diamondback in the wild....

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I'll have to dig thru my photos Matt, I took a pic of one at the Fakahatchie strand in Florida about 20 years ago...it was all coiled up on the trail side. Real cool snake! Took it with slide film using an old pentax k1000 (basically a metal box with a light meter! by todays standard but a great workhorse student camera then)


-al

Al, cool that you and Ethan share this experience :D even if it means extra work this coming winter. I do not know that garter snakes gave live birth. I have only keep a couple garter snakes in the past.

Diana and I kept a baby ring neck snake over the winter. I found it in the horse's hay on a cool fall day. We feed it crickets and later tree frogs. That snake doubled it's size when we released it in the spring.

Man...they just freak me out!!!!! Spiders too LOL!

Well they look like big bass bait to me!:bandana: