Beware of the belly crawler the one with cold eyes that never close. He slithers in the shadows, licks the air with a forked tongue and drinks in the delicious smells of warm-blooded prey. He needs no light, no sound, no visible victim, almost nothing, just a few molecules of the scent of purple martins in their nests is enough. Behold the rat snake. He eagerly offers his coils in a deadly embrace to those foolish enough to accept.
The belly crawler is the rat snake and these predators are deadly killers of purple martins and other cavity nesting birds. The rat snake has an organ in the roof of its mouth called the Jacobson’s organ. The snake flickers its forked tongue out to “taste” the air for molecules of prey. Then the snake transfers the scent to the Jacobson’s organ which helps guide the snake to its prey. And nothing is more inviting to a hungry rat snake than a gourd rack or house full of warm blooded purple martins!
My good friend Johnny Gerber lives in Quitman which is in north central Louisiana below Ruston. Johnny has a thriving martin colony with about 40 pairs in residence right now. He uses Super Gourds, Troyer Horizontals with cling plates, some naturals and several T-14s. His two gourd racks and two T-14s are on four heavy duty metal poles.
And ALL his poles are protected from rat snakes with net traps made from ¾ inch bird netting. He constructs his net traps very much like mine by creating a four prong metal foundation and then fluffing up netting all around the prongs to create a “wad” or “ball”. The netting is NOT tightly matted or flattened against the pole, but spread out so any rat snake will crawl THROUGH the netting and not OVER it. And there are NO gaps between the netting and the pole so that a rat snake could slither up the pole and UNDER any net trap.
Rat snakes tend to approach a net trap like they would vegetation and start to weave through the net squares. As the snake’s body is pushing through, it eventually can go no farther inside a ¾ inch square and then stops. The distance the snake can muscularly force its way through the netting depends largely on the snake’s girth. The snake can’t back up because the thin plastic netting catches the snake’s scales. The snake becomes hopelessly ensnared.
The ¾ inch netting will catch most large rat snakes including ones over three feet in length as these snakes tend to be thick in girth and can only get so far into the net squares before becoming trapped. I have seen them only get about five or six inches into the netting and become caught. However, some smaller thinner rat snakes may be able to penetrate the ¾ inch netting and not get trapped. I have used ½ inch netting to capture smaller rat snakes. I will have two layers of netting in my trap: the bottom will be ¾ inch and top will be ½ inch. Any large snake would get caught in the bottom ¾ inch netting and any smaller snake would hopefully get trapped higher up in the ½ inch layer. However, I have been unable to find any of the ½ inch netting recently and rely mainly on the ¾ inch kind.
You can often find the bird netting at garden centers, Tractor Supply, Wal-mart, and home improvement businesses like Lowes or Home Depot. It is not expensive.
Well, today April 6 Johnny called me and said when he arrived home from work this afternoon at around 3:00 he found a large rat snake completely caught in one of his net traps. When he left early this morning around 6:30 am, there was NO snake in the netting so this snake got caught later.
He took some photos and I am posting them on the Forum. I believe this may be a black rat snake even though this snake is checkered; there is much variation in coloration among the various rat snake species. But its white chin/throat area is characteristic of the black rat snake.
This photo shows the rat snake’s length as the snake’s head/neck area is ensnared in the netting. Johnny said the snake only got about four or five inches into the netting before being completely caught. The snake measured four feet nine inches. If the snake had managed to get up into the gourd rack, he/she could have eaten a number of adult martins and stayed up there and moved from one gourd to the other.
This photo shows the rat snake with its mouth wide open in defiance and Johnny took its mug shot!
Steve
Glad he caught it, as I am sure it could have done some major damage.