Slightly Off-Topic: Cornflake the Corn Snake

 I often credit the plains garter snake for my love of snakes, and that largely holds true.  But there was one particular snake that expanded my understanding of snakes and represented a gateway to the multitude of snakes that lived beyond the streets of Chicago.  I think it's about time to memorialize this animal.

As usual, I like to provide some backstory.  In the early nineties, I befriended a neighborhood boy who had recently moved to Chicago from northwestern Georgia.  He was an outdoors type, like I was, but came from a place very different from the city and his range of outdoors activities far surpassed mine.  In his bedroom stood a chest of drawers topped by a ten-gallon aquarium, and in that aquarium lived what he called an "Egyptian ratsnake" (I would much later come to understand that this was a diadem ratsnake (Spalerosophis diadema).  It was often coiled tightly on the green astroturf, next to its hot rock.  Every time I'd go to my friend's house, I would gravitate toward this snake.  I spent a lot of time looking at and holding it.  Then a few months later, it was gone and in its place was a hatchling California kingsnake.  That one didn't last long for one reason or another, and it was swiftly replaced by an adult "Florida corn snake".

I was extremely fascinated by this corn snake.  It was about four feet long and clad in earthy oranges and browns with a black and white checkerboard belly.  In the absence of a hide, it too spent its days coiled atop the Astroturf next to the hot rock.  And I don't believe a day went by when I didn't take it out to handle it.  The only attention it received from my friend was during feeding time.  My friend fed it live mice, and the snake would almost immediately strike and constrict the mouse until it was dead.  Then it swallowed the mouse whole.  This was all new to me, since the garters at my house were fed worms and minnows and simply grabbed and swallowed them alive.

The neighborhood kids mostly hated him

Me pretending to be strangled 

I know this probably sounds weird to many people, but I noticed that the corn snake not only felt different than the garters, but it smelled different too.  It's tough to describe, but it's a clean smell.  I call it the "corn snake smell".  I notice that all corn snakes smell exactly the same - even slightly distinct from other members of its genus such as grey ratsnakes.  

After about a year or two, my friend's family returned to Georgia.  My friend gifted me the corn snake before he left, knowing it would be in good hands.  This was shortly after my parents separated, so the timing was serendipitous.  My dad never allowed any snakes in the house - not even my garters.  Those had to be kept in terrariums on our patio table, underneath an awning.  Now I had a legit collection - garters and a corn snake - in my modest bedroom (thanks, mom).  

Keeping a four-foot snake in a twenty-inch enclosure didn't feel right.  One day, my mom drove me to Pet Supplies Plus where she bought me a forty gallon "breeder" terrarium.  I also selected a large bag of fir bark chips to replace the lousy and unsightly artificial turf.  To this day, I can never smell this kind of bark and not be whisked away to my first corn snake enclosure.  The huge new enclosure took up every inch of desk space, giving me another reason to avoid doing my homework.

Sometimes we called him "Cornflake the corn snake", but I don't think he ever had an official name (I wasn't into naming herps).  He was with me the first time I ever presented about snakes to an audience, when I was in the eighth grade.  I remember having to get permission from my principal to bring a snake into the school, and I was happy when permission was granted.  The principal stood by the door while I held the snake and talked to my class; the talk was so well-received that I was asked to do the same presentation for two other grades.  Skip class and talk about snakes?  A no-brainer.

My family moved to a new house in the late summer of 1996, and therefore so did my corn snake (and a few others I had acquired since).  In 1997, I bought a second corn snake, an adult amelanistic female, with the intent on breeding the snakes.  I was a few years deep into Reptiles magazine, had devoured every single book on snakes I could find, and felt like I was ready to take this next step.  After some cycling and conditioning, I introduced my male corn snake to the female in the spring of 1998, and a couple of months later, had eggs which in turn hatched later that summer.  There is an interesting story related to that process, but at the risk of deviating too far from the main subject, I digress.  

Cornflake's offspring (with the mother)

Around the time my corn snake became a father, he began showing signs of failing health.  He became increasingly lethargic and accepted food only sporadically, losing weight.  Looking back, I should have addressed his condition with more urgency, but I was pretty enamored with this beautiful batch of baby corn snakes for the first time in my life, as well as getting the adult female back in shape after oviposition.  When I see photos of him from 1998, I'm overcome with a feeling of guilt, even though his condition may have been untreatable.  He died in early 1999.

In the coming years, I'd work with countless other snakes, even though my primary interests revolved around the natural history of wild snakes (and still do).  But the lasting effects of owning and caring for my first corn snake are undeniable.  I hope, somewhere out there, his progeny are inspiring other kids the way he inspired me.

Slightly Off-Topic: Milksnake in the Alley

Once upon a time, I found a milksnake in my alley.  Well, if you've read enough of this blog over the years, you'll know that that doesn't sound all that unusual.  But this story is different.  It's a short story about an unlikely predicament - and the value of being in the right place at the right time.

July 12, 2017 started as a normal Wednesday.  I was at work when shortly before noon, I received a DM from someone on the Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association Facebook page (to clarify, there isn't, or wasn't, an actual association - at least not like the weird, self-important ones out here in the far western burbs.  I think it was just a loose conglomerate of minor community leaders and other loud people).  I was told that a Jefferson Park resident had made a most unusual discovery - a snake that appeared to be pinned under a garbage can in the alley.  The snake was red and white, which didn't make sense to me.  So I asked for the resident to take a photo.

The photo that was sent to me shortly afterward really had me perplexed.  It looked like an amelanistic milksnake of Mexican origin, maybe a Nelson's milksnake.  These are somewhat popular in the exotic pet trade.  How did the snake end up in an alley, stuck under a garbage can?

I did what any self-respecting snake advocate would do.  I left work (in the Hermosa community) on my lunch break and high-tailed it to Jefferson Park.  En route, an absolute gusher of a downpour slowed my progress as traffic turned bumper to bumper along Milwaukee Avenue.  I'm talking buckets.  

The rain was letting up by the time I arrived to the scene.  The homeowner, a nice lady, came out to meet me and hand me an empty shoebox.  She then pointed me in the direction of the snake.  She refused to get within 10 feet of the scene and told me that getting those photos earlier took all of the courage she had.  I approached the garbage can, and watched in horror as the snake, still firmly pinned, struggled to surface under a steadily rushing torrent of stormwater as it made its way toward the drain.  

I wasted no time in lifting the full and VERY heavy garbage can up and collecting the snake.  It was definitely an amelanistic milksnake, either nelsoni or a bastardized mutt as some of these captive-produced morphs tend to be.  Skinny, limp, and lethargic, I didn't hold much hope for this one.  I put it in the shoebox, thanked the homeowner, and went home to put the snake into a darker and more secure enclosure it may quietly expire in.  I figured the internal injuries were devastating enough to render the snake doomed.  Then I returned to work and didn't think much about it.

When I arrived home several hours later, the snake was still alive, so I set it up in a small glass terrarium.  After a few days, I offered it food, which it eventually accepted.  I was still skeptical that it was a success story because part of its body had been smashed flat for at least two hours and I couldn't imagine that its organs would function properly.  But they did.  It accepted food each subsequent feeding (and pooped normally), though its feeding habit was odd.  I found that the snake would only eat if teased by the food item to the point of spastic throws of its body and manic zoomies around its enclosure for a minute, after which it would strike defensively and then hork down the food.

Someone else from the association reached out and asked me to speak to their meeting about the snake, and I used this as an opportunity to expand on the native snakes of Chicago.  A reporter from the Chicago Northwest Side Press was present and interviewed me after my presentation for an article that appeared on the front page on October 4 (slow news week I guess).  It's kind of ironic that I was referred to as a "lifelong Jefferson Park resident", when by the time the article was published, we were in the process of moving to our current home out in northwest DuPage County.

               

Shortly after the snake's rescue

Eight years later, the snake is still with us, living out its rather luxurious life along with a few other snakes in the house. Rehoming didn't make much sense - the story is too wild.