Category: Nature Study

While doing some cleaning up along the edge of the woods, my husband came across this little guy, an eastern hog-nosed snake:

The first thing he did was send our son in to get me because we have to document everything we find (nature study you know!).  So I came out with camera in hand just as they had finished observing him regurgitating his dinner (a large toad ~ sorry no photo of that!).  The snake then proceeded to coil up his body, flip over, stick out his tongue and crack his mouth open really wide. 

Well it seemed to us that maybe he had tried to eat too much and overexerted himself.  So I picked him up, put him in jar, and brought him inside to try to identify him with our snake chart (courtesy of the MO dept of conservation).  He didn't move a bit!  He looked dead.  Any other snake would have darted at the first step we would have taken toward him, but this guy looked really sick.

It didn't take Austin, our snake expert, long to recollect reading about this particular snake and he thought that perhaps the snake was "playing dead".  Playing dead?  That seemed so odd!  Turns out, he was right!  The eastern hognosed snake will in fact turn himself over and play dead as a way of defense.  After a few minutes in the jar, he came out of his "playing dead" phase and began moving around.  So we took him back to the woods to release him.  As soon as we let him out of the jar, he went back to playing dead again.  It was hilarious!  Finally, I guess he realized we were not a threat and began to leave the area, but not without giving us a final big "hiss".  Great nature find!