Corn Snake (Red Rat Snake) Tongue Flicking

Video: Corn Snake (Red Rat Snake) Tongue Flicking

Corn Snake or Red Rat Snake surprise behind a piece of lumber stored along the back fence in Florida. Spend a few minutes with this gentle sweet snake and then leave it be till it warms up. Beautiful and beneficial constrictor snakes - the ones that inhabit the backyard have very unusual color patterns and are quite pretty. See this snake or its sibling at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQtQWZvxo5w

And probably its Mom at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z577-h9JiAQ

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Video: Corn Snake (Red Rat Snake) Tongue Flicking

Large Wild Red Rat Snake or Corn Snake - Alarm Sounded by Backyard Blue Jays

Large Wild Red Rat Snake or Corn Snake - Alarm Sounded by Backyard Blue Jays

Large Wil Red Rat Snake or Corn Snake in Florida

In this video a large Red Rat Snake nearly five feet long is discovered by Blue Jays - the security guards of the backyard - and the alarm is sounded. When you hear a bunch of Blue Jays making a ruckus in the backyard - grab your camera and head outside! Before I could get my camera set up several Blue Jays had surrounded the snake on the ground and were chastising it severely letting every creature within earshot know about this large predator.  This was still during bird nesting season the first week of May and while the Red Rat Snake mostly eats abundant lizards and small rodents they are known as great tree-climbers and will eat bird eggs and young birds in the nest. Our Screech Owl nest box is "snake proof" so that allows me to feel more charitable to the Big Ratter. It's all a balance, however, as I've seen Red Rat Snakes hanging from the talons of Red Shouldered Hawks in flight a number of times and at night the young Red Rat Snakes make up a part of the Screech Owl diet. One of the most "attractive" of U.S. snakes they are said to make good snake pets :-) . But their striking color tends to make people afraid of them - they are slow-moving, docile if left alone as the video shows and non-venomous. They are too often killed by homeowners. They are pretty much sitting ducks as the video illustrates.  They should not be killed. If you have one of these large beauties in your backyard you can have it trapped and relocated to the wild. Not sure how old this one is, but it likely took at least 4 or 5 years to reach nearly to 5 feet in length.

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Beautiful Florida Red Rat Snake or Corn Snake Makes a Visit to the Backyard!

Beautiful Florida Red Rat Snake or Corn Snake Makes a Visit to the Backyard!

Florida Red Rat Snake or Corn Snake

This is the second large Red Rat Snake I've encountered in the backyard in the past year. I was able to get excellent close-up video of this snake slowly winding its way to the back fence to escape. I'll post that in the near future. I was alerted to the snake's presence by Blue Jays making a bunch of noise as they sort of "mobbed" the snake as it moved across the open back patio. More as a warning than an attempt to thwart the snake, the Blue Jays act like the backyard alarm system. Many small animals such as squirrels and other birds react to the Blue Jay's alarm shrieks, not out of fear of the Blue Jays, but recognition that the Blue Jays see or sense danger.

The Red Rat Snake is an attractive snake, but can be "scary looking" to people who encounter it in their yard and unfortunately the slow lumbering nature of these constrictor snakes means that many are killed on sight. This is unfortunate as they eat small rodents and lizards primarily and help keep the backyard ecosystem in check. They are perhaps one of the more genuinely attractive snakes in the U.S. and will only coil and stand their ground if given no choice. The sad thing is the majority of them are easily killed by hacking or beating as they make a slow "run" for safety. The video will be along in a week or so. More information is at Wikipedia .