[obol] garter snake hunting/feeding behavior

[Ted Chu]

Many years ago while relaxing in a natural hot spring pool adjacent to a cold stream in Idaho, I noticed a larger than average Terrestrial (misnomer?) Garter Snake hunting it's way down the creek. It was working with the current pausing to investigate under the downstream side of the smooth stones. It eventually emerged very near me with a good sized sculpin which it had caught by the tail. The sculpin's head was at least three times the diameter of the snake's head. I expected it would have to reverse it's grip on the fish to swallow it head first due to the extra large pectoral fins of the sculpin plus possible rearward directed opercular spines on it's head. The snake crawled partially out of the water on a large stone and began swallowing the fish against the grain without any trouble until it encountered the pectoral fins. Aha I thought, now you've got a problem. But as I watched in amazement the snake expanded its jaws even further and gradually folded the sculpin's pectoral fins forward until it was able to finish swallowing its prey. The whole swallowing sequence probably took close to 30 minutes. After resting for another 10 minutes or so the snake dropped back into the water and continued its hunt downstream until it went out of sight. My camera was at home of course.

Writing about this today makes me wonder for the first time whether at some, or at what point this snake would stop and work or hunt it's way back upstream, or if it just went with the flow indefinitely which seems unlikely otherwise all the garter snakes in the world would eventually end up in either the ocean or the Great Salt Lake!
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Ted Chu
POB 26
Garibaldi, OR  97118-0026
theohwy101 at msn.com
ph - Verizon 971-227-3422 
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