![]() In the south, the venomous coral snakes can be told from the non-venomous milk snakes by a rhyme that goes, variously, something like, “red beside black, you’re okay Jack, red beside yellow, you’re a dead fellow.” If you look closely at the Eastern Milk Snake you can begin to see how the blotches may have started out as bands (or vice versa). In fact, some of the milk snake subspecies may eventually be split off into their own distinct species, but for the time being they’re all one group. It’s surprising to think that the above snake is actually related to the one that we find around here. Some of the other subspecies are known as kingsnakes, and/or resemble the highly venomous coral snakes. syspila), by Mike Pingleton, from Wikimedia Commons This one was on the smaller side of that range, perhaps a couple of feet. Different subspecies will achieve different lengths, ranging from 50 to 150 cm (20 to 60 inches). In North America the Eastern has perhaps one of the largest ranges of the milk snakes that are native to here, found in deciduous forests from Quebec and Maine, west to eastern Minnesota, and south to northern Alabama. There are 25 recognized subspecies of Milk Snake, ranging from southeastern Canada south to Ecuador and Venezuela in South America. The Eastern is the nominate subspecies, L. The Eastern Milk Snake is actually a subspecies of the Milk Snake, Lampropeltis triangulum. A young milk snake will mostly eat invertebrates befitting its much smaller size. As adults their diet mostly consists of small rodents such as mice, but they’re opportunistic feeders, eating anything it can catch that’s small enough to fit down its throat, from birds’ eggs to frogs to invertebrates. It is primarily a nocturnal hunter, and tends to be hidden during the day, under or behind objects. It doesn’t use venom to subdue its prey, but instead catches it with its teeth and then constricts it to kill it. Strictly speaking, the milk snakes, while they can give a painful bite, are not dangerous in the sense of being lethally venomous, so the stick was mostly to ensure my skin remained intact. Concerned for his longevity should he continue to stay there, I got out of my car, ran a few photos off, and then shooed him back into the nearby ditch with the help of a longish stick. There wasn’t any sun, but the road pavement would still have picked up enough of the radiation that did manage to pierce the clouds to be just a bit warmer than the surrounding vegetation. I spotted it basking on the road earlier this week. It’s probably true that as a schoolkid, if I’d had a beautiful big Eastern Milk Snake like this it would’ve attracted a lot of attention. I’m not a fan of most R&B/hiphop music, and I don’t even particularly like this song, but I couldn’t stop it from going through my head as I was doing the research for this page.
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