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Found a littlle Coachwhip

BigJoe

BigJoe

New member
While doing some maint. in the vineyard, I came across this little guy, a very young eastern coachwhip. He thought he was gonna be tough at first and try standing up to me, well that didn't work, so he chilled out and was actually quite docile, especially for a coachwhip. He made it real easy to get some nice pics of him before he decided he had enough of me and took off down a Gopher tortoise hole. Look closely at the last pic, I saw something in there I never saw when I was taking the pics, but my 8 year old spotted it immediately while looking at the pics, he's my little herping buddy.

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The_Thunderer said:
Wow... The hidden one is probably thinking... "of all the trees the guy has to let this guy go in..."
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I actually laughed out loud reading this.

Nanci said:
And excellent photos! You can tell that's a snake that hunts by sight.

Vineyard you say? :)
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Yep, vineyard. We grow various types of muscadine grapes to sell to the local winery. My dad used to make his own wine as well, he actually won several ribbons at both the county and state levels.
 
Connie found a baby coachwhip a couple of weeks ago in the garage. We were putting insulation on the garage doors and she looked down at the edge of the door we were working on and said "Hey! There's a snake there!"

He only struck at me once, and calmed right down when I picked him up. So I marched him down to the end of the property and let him go. Connie doesn't want him eating her lizards that roam all around here. Not to mention all the baby toads around here.

Actually I have a fondness for coachwhips for some reason. Don't care much for black racers, but coachwhips just seem like a higher class of snake to me.
 
Rich Z said:
Actually I have a fondness for coachwhips for some reason. Don't care much for black racers, but coachwhips just seem like a higher class of snake to me.
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I'm with ya, Rich. They "seem" like an "evolutionary step forward" in intelligence in snakes.
 
BigJoe said:
Yep, vineyard. We grow various types of muscadine grapes to sell to the local winery. My dad used to make his own wine as well, he actually won several ribbons at both the county and state levels.
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Cool. I love native Florida wine. I live pretty close to Dakotah Winery, and visit San Sebastian and Lakeridge fairly often. (When they have their BOGO case sales!!)
 
It took me forever to find the frog. My 5 year old walked up and said, oh look at the frog and the snake! ....no wonder he is so good at catching them!
 
Rich Z said:
Actually I have a fondness for coachwhips for some reason. Don't care much for black racers, but coachwhips just seem like a higher class of snake to me.
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I like them much better than racers too, but the adults usually have a real bad attitude.

gsdbecca said:
It took me forever to find the frog. My 5 year old walked up and said, oh look at the frog and the snake! ....no wonder he is so good at catching them!
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That's funny, my 8 year old was the first to spot the frog too, and he loves catching them as well.
 
Speaking of coachwhips, I had a rather interesting experience with one a long while back. I had just moved down to Florida back in 1991, and a friend of mine came down from Maryland to visit. We went out to do some snake hunting not far from my house and found an area with some sheet tin tucked away in a wooded area. So that looked promising. Under one of the pieces I looked under was a good sized coachwhip, but it was rather unusual (as far as I know) in that it had very broad lighter colored bands on it. It must have been cool underneath the tin, because it didn't kick up much of a fuss when I grabbed it.

Now normally you would expect a high strung snake like the coachwhip to thrash around at least somewhat, but this one only struggled slightly, and then went catatonic on me. I mean REALLY catatonic. It was like I was holding a tree branch or a carved piece of wood. I seriously thought the snake had died in my hands and gone all rigor mortis on me. I handled him for a few minutes, and even my friend handled him as well, and he didn't move a muscle. No tongue flicking, nothing. It was the weirdest darn thing.....

So I figured I would put him back underneath the tin and just leave him be.

We checked back a little later on, and he was gone, so thankfully whatever happened to the poor guy was only temporary. I've never had any other snake do that, nor have I heard of anyone describing a coachwhip going catatonic. Heck, for that matter I've never seen another coachwhip with broad banding like this one had. :shrugs:
 
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