gopher snake

My girls loved it when a red-tailed hawk dropped a live gopher snake within 15 feet of them while we were out hiking, and they were thrilled when a coyote passed their bedroom window with a squirming jackrabbit in its jaws.

I explained that it looked like a rattlesnake to me, but he brushed this aside--after all, who's the expert here?--and asked, "Where are you located?" I told him, and he exclaimed, "Oh, Strawberry Hill--that's a gopher snake for sure.

Over in the celebration's Animal Kingdom, Springfield resident Sophia Hart, 7, held a gopher snake at the Oregon Herpetological Society Tent.

In contrast, the ground squirrel tails didn't warm appreciably during similar taunting of a gopher snake. This predator doesn't have infrared sensors.

In another case a gopher snake (Pituophis melanoleucas) was stretched out next to a fresh gopher mound, with its nose and about 15 cm of its body burrowed into the mound.

I once foolishly ejected a gopher snake from my observatory, only to realize later that it kept the rodent population under control.

Photo: How slimy is a gopher snake? Refuge naturalist lets you feel

Large, yellow-brown, dark-blotched species such as bull and gopher snakes commonly appear around quiet, open country houses.

(6.) Diller LV and Johnson DR: Food habits, consumption rates, and predation rates of western rattlesnakes and gopher snakes in southwestern Idaho.

Ground squirrels serve as prey for a large diversity of predators including raptors (prairie falcons, ferruginous hawks, red-tailed hawks, goshawks, Cooper's hawks, and others), ravens, carnivores (badgers, coyotes, long-tailed weasels), and snakes (western rattlesnakes and gopher snakes) (Yensen et al., 1992).

Alternative perspectives on the diet of gopher snakes (Pituophis catenifer, Colubridae): Literature records versus stomach contents of wild and museum specimens.