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Gopher Snake — Part 2
While most snakes confine their food either to warm-blooded animals, or to other reptiles and batrachians, this species is quite omnivorous, feeding with equal voracity upon small mammals and birds, frogs, toads, lizards, and other snakes. Captive specimens are very fond of small fishes. Few reptiles are so hardy in captivity. A specimen has been in the writer's collection for eleven years. This snake was full-grown when received. The writer has exhibited it to many friends who were prejudiced against snakes, but when noting the complete docility of the handsome creature, have become quickly reconciled to the fact that the actual serpent is a far different animal than the imaginative one. The amateur snake student can select no more satisfactory reptile for observation and study than the Indigo Snake.
In the South, it is no rare sight to see one of these large snakes gliding about the immediate vicinity of the dwellings that are removed from the larger towns. In such places the reptiles are regarded as good ratters. Some specimens will remain for years in a certain small area of a plantation, or in the vicinity of the stables, and are almost daily picked up by the children or their elders, who regard them as pets. Such reptiles, accustomed to the sight of man, are devoid of fear and rather seem to enjoy the process of being handled.
The yellow rat snake, or "cribo" of the West Indies and tropical South America, of which species the Indigo Snake is but a northern variety, displays a similar good nature and enjoys the same toleration from mankind. The closely allied rat snakes of India are generally protected, on account of their usefulness in destroying vermin, but are diabolical in temper and usually remain untamable in captivity.
The Indigo Snake is oviparous. Its eggs equal those of a bantam in size.
The Genus Zamenis: The snakes of this genus are closely allied to the species of Spilotes. They kill their prey in the same fashion--not by constriction, but by pressing the animal firmly to the ground, deglutition proceeding at the same time.