WOLDSMAN
member
Reged: 23/07/2008
Posts: 2
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Can anyone shed any light on the following. A colleague, whilst cycling past my house, found a large dead grass snake on the road and bought it to show me. When he tipped it out on the drive, my 3 dogs were present. The 2 terriers were immediately wary of the snake and investigated it at arms legth, so to speak, ready to jump back at any time. My lurcher however, showed no caution, and smelt it all over. She then began to salivate very strongly, to the point where her mouth was frothing up and saliva was dripping onto the drive. At no point did she attempt to pick the snake up. Would appreciate any comment to shed light on this unusual reaction
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Alastair_Balmain
stranger
Reged: 18/08/2006
Posts: 97
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Hi Woldsman,
Welcome to the forum — and I hope you get an answer to your question. Any herpetologists out there who'd like to put forward an answer? (Unfortunately it's not my chosen specialist subject.)
It's certainly an interesting one. There was a story of a dead grass snake in the magazine only recently (although I can't for the life of me remember which one of Shooting Times' writers was discussing it). Essentially the grass snake feigns death very effectively, and then when the threat has passed returns to life.
Now as I said, I'm no expert, but I suspect your dead grass snake might have been a very live one (unless you know it was decomposing/long dead).
That still doesn't explain your lurcher's reaction.
Can anyone shed some light on this — I think it's a fascinating query.
Alastair.
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Alastair Balmain, Deputy editor, Shooting Times
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WOLDSMAN
member
Reged: 23/07/2008
Posts: 2
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Alastair
Stone dead unfortunately as it was on the road and it's head had been flattened by a car. As a matter of interest, we measured it this morning at work - it was 43" from nose to tail, so a fairly big female I guess.
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Cack_shot
member
Reged: 17/11/2008
Posts: 9
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Hi
I have 4 pet corn snakes so i know a little bit about them
i know Grass snakes dont grow that large they never normally get longer that 30 inches so one at 43 maybe something is wrong , ( of course you can get some larger than others but and extra 13 inches seem unlikely TBH , )
Males also tend to be the larger of the two .
It may have also be an escaped corn snake they come in indifferent size`s are are very hardly can can survive the Uk fairly well . biggest problem is feeding as 99.9% of UK corn snakes are captive breed and they dont know how to catch live food ,
These day lots of people keep them and they love to escape !!
as for the reason why your dog behaved like that is a mystery , i suspect that if it been dead a while it may of be a parasite on the snake that caused the dog to become irritated .
How is the dog now ? i mean if it was anything more sinister then i would expect the dog to have a large reaction over the next few hours
and there would not unduly worry ,
But of course its always nice to know the reason
all the best
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