A Pet Pine Snake on a Wisconsin Farm 



Karl P. Schmidt 

 American Museum of Natural History, New York City 



A big yellow snake or two hanging over a roadside fence, 

 victims of the snake killing zeal prevalent in rural communities, 

 was not many years ago a common sight in the farming country 

 of our Middle West. The Pine Snake or Bull Snake (Pityophts 

 catenifer sayi) is most likely to meet this unmerited fate, for 

 snakes of this species frequent especially the hay and grain fields 

 in search of the destructive short-tailed field mice, and so meet 

 their own destruction at the hands of the farmer or the farmer's 

 boy. Although the sight becomes yearly less common, the 

 increasing rarity is not, I fear, an evidence of increasing intelligence 

 among farmers, but of the alarming decrease in numbers of this 

 species, one of the largest and handsomest as well as agriculturally 

 most useful of North American snakes. 



As a part of a campaign against the indiscriminate slaughter 

 of snakes in general, it has been a yearly practice on our Wisconsin 

 farm to keep a snake or two caged on the back porch for a time 

 in summer, to demonstrate their harmlessness to the neighbors. 

 Never until last summer, however, did we have a Pine Snake 

 (always our favorite species) that would feed in captivity. Our 

 last year's pet proved interesting in more ways than one. 



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