That's a bull snake, a relatively small one, about the size of a large garter snake. Bull snakes can exceed six feet in length.
Anyone have a good recipe for barbecue snake?
This visitor is still alive, slipped into a hole in the oven base and slithered away. Seriously, though, does anyone know if bull snakes are edible?Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw
Yikes! And yet, what a handsome snake. How could you be thinking about eating the poor fellow? I realize that he practically placed himself inside your oven, but he was likely just thinking how kind it was of you to build him a house!
ReplyDeleteOdds are high that I would have shit myself if that happened to me...
ReplyDeleteI'd ask Camera Trap Codger or Steve Bodio, but I'm pretty sure all snakes are edible.
ReplyDeleteGood rat and mouse catcher to have around your place!
Sharon, I wouldn't eat that snake--it's much too small. Also, after an incident involving a live snake one of my students brought me as a gift when I was teaching in China, the Quentin Taratino-esque scene that ensued from the student's attempts, with sizable audience, to dispatch the snake in my apartment's bathroom, I do not take lightly the potentially gruesome difficulties of snake slaughter. But our Wisconsin neighbors just down the hill mentioned that they've encountered quite a lot of bull snakes down their way, so I just wondered, for future reference, about general snake edibility.
ReplyDeleteTeddy, had it been a full-grown bull snake, I might have had the same reaction....
mdmnm, thanks for the resources, I may ask their opinion. As the oven is near our bird feeders, which attract plenty of mice and voles for fallen seed, I imagine our oven snake is eating pretty well.
Update: I've found the snake under the oven tarp twice now. I guess it's found a home....
Cheers, all~ Brett
Don' t believe your pictured snake is a Bull Snake, but instead, an Eastern Fox Snake. Color pattern in too uniform and head not right shape for a Bull Snake. I have breed several Bull and Fox snakes over the years - coloration and pattern is close, sort of, and Bulls are much bigger and more aggressive.
ReplyDeleteThat's a FOX snake. Not a bull snake.
ReplyDelete