Luckily for a 5½-foot Eastern rat snake, a Virginia woman noticed something was amiss. It had a large lump stuck halfway down its slender body.
She took it to Blue Ridge Wildlife Center in Boyce, Va., where a veterinarian performed a three-hour surgery and helped the rat snake during a six-month recovery.
Rehabbed animals at the wildlife center are given numbers instead of names. And in Virginia, reptiles and amphibians, by law, can only be released on May 1 when the weather is warmer and they don’t face dangers of being let go in colder months, experts said.
Riley said chicken owners sometimes put fake, wooden eggs or golf balls in a coop to try to teach their chickens where to lay eggs or to stop them from pecking at real eggs. But that’s a risky practice for snakes.
Rat snakes, which eat a diet of rodents, birds and birds’ eggs, often find their way into a chicken coop if it’s not secure and mistake a fake egg or golf ball for a real one.
Even with an expandable gastrointestinal tract, a snake can’t digest and break down a golf ball. Sometimes a snake can regurgitate a ball or, Riley said, she’s been able to “milk” it out of a snake’s body manually.
Other times it’s not so easy. Eventually the blockage cuts off a snake’s blood and oxygen supply, forcing it to endure a “prolonged, uncomfortable death,” Riley said. She said it “can take weeks to months for a rat snake” that’s swallowed a golf ball to die.
Snake slithers out of car’s air vent as Virginia woman is driving
Plus, Riley said, many people don’t understand the role of snakes in the ecosystem and kill them. In Virginia, it’s illegal to kill a snake, because they’re protected, unless it poses an immediate threat.
The snake was prevented from “eating anything big” for about eight weeks, starting with a tube-fed diet and gradually taking on normal favorites such as mice and birds. The snake recovered well, Riley said, calling it a “fan favorite” among the staff and volunteers at the wildlife center.
This snake and other snakes are to be released to the areas where they were found, because it’s illegal to relocate a snake in Virginia.
Riley said she hopes that the snake’s tale can be a lesson for chicken owners to make sure their coops are secure so predators don’t get inside and get hurt.