Unusual snake experience

By Nicole Back, staff writer

June 24, 2009 — A Clearfield man’s recent encounter with a reptile could pass for a scene from “a cool sci-fi movie.” However, Matt Oesch, of Fallin Timber Road, said what happened to him was definitely real.

Oesch came upon his rabbit cage with one more thing inside than he expected to see. He witnessed a five foot snake ripping pieces of flesh from his eight week old caged, wild cottontail rabbits, he said.

“It was mean and evil for a snake to do that,” he said. “I can understand a snake putting something to death and then swallowing it. I can’t see something eating an animal while it’s alive. If that snake was 20 foot long it could rip your arm off.”

Oesch grabbed the only thing nearby he could find to distract the snake from his rabbits: a shovel.

“(The snake) chased one rabbit out of the cage, the one it was tearing up the most,” he said.

The rabbit got away. The snake turned toward Oesch, Oesch said.

“It spread its head like a cobra,” he said. “It’s got a big hole where it sprays stuff out at you. It was squirting stuff out at me. It wasn’t squirting stuff out at the rabbits.”

Oesch said he did the only thing his instincts told him to do. He killed the snake with his shovel. After the killing, Oesch hung the snake from a tree in his yard.

“The cat ripped the rabbit meat out of the snake and ate it,” he said.

Oesch eventually examined the dead snake’s teeth. He was amazed that they were facing backward.

Shortly after his battle with the snake, Oesch informed someone who was doing repair work on his garage door of what had happened.

He explained that the snake had shot a “clear mist” from its mouth.

Estill Back, of Cave Run Overhead Doors, knew exactly what type of snake Oesch was talking about. He told Oesch the snake he killed is a blowing viper.

“His grandfather told him if venom gets in your eyes you have 15 minutes to live,” he said. “I’ve got three young kids so I don’t want the poisonous ones around.”

Oesch called the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources and spoke with a biologist by the name of Steve Bonney. Oesch said he asked Bonney what type of snake he may have hanging from his tree.

“The guy said ‘you watch too much Jurassic Park. Snakes don’t tear flesh off animals. They wrap around them, they squeeze them, they swallow them,’ ” Oesch said.

Oesch contacted The Morehead News so that the newspaper could take photos of the snake in question. The newspaper then contacted Bonney.

“I don’t recall telling him that he was watching too much Jurassic Park,” Bonney said. “I do recall telling him that some of what he was describing was not consistent with any snake I have ever heard of.”

Other snake experts say although Oesch’s story is entertaining, it cannot be true.

“Whoever it was that said there’s no such thing around here, they’re mistaken,” Back said. “They’ve not been out and about. If they stepped on one, they’d know it.”

Hearing the story without seeing the snake led each expert who spoke with The Morehead News to think the snake in Oesch’s story was a hognose snake. Hognose snakes are often referred to as “puff adder” or “blow viper.”

When hognose snakes feel threatened they flatten their heads and hiss loudly. One of their favorite foods is toads. Toads generally fill themselves up with air to appear to be too large for snakes to swallow. Hognose snakes use their special teeth to pop the air out of toads.

“All snakes’ teeth are backward,” Bonney said.

The owner of Reefs and Reptiles in Grayson annually participates in the Eastern Kentucky Reptile Show at the Morehead Conference Center on East First Street in Morehead.

“People tell me stories every day that they truly believe, that don’t happen,” Jarrod Greer said. “I’ve almost tried to dispel myths around here. That’s too far fetched for me.”

John MacGregor, herpetologist, said he, too, hears snake stories often that could not possibly be true.

“The fact that the snake came after him, a lot of times that’s in the eye of the beholder,” John MacGregor, herpetologist, said.

The snake could have felt threatened, which could have made it behave defensively.

“It could be that the snake was injured, like if (Oesch) whacked it with a shovel,” MacGregor said.

There are four types of venomous snakes in Kentucky: the Northern Copperhead, Western cottonmouth (water moccasin), timber rattlesnake and pygmy rattlesnake.

No Kentucky snakes are known to shoot venom out their mouths.

When MacGregor and Greer saw pictures of the snake in question, each of the men said the proper name of the snake is, “black rat snake.”

MacGregor said the hair torn from the rabbits was most likely from the snake’s teeth getting imbedded in the thin skin during a strike. The snake was probably trying to grab and constrict the rabbit when Oesch surprised it. A rat snake can also rip the skin off the nose of a raccoon while defending itself.

“Rat snakes vibrate their tails as a defensive move and will also rear straight up in self defense in sort of an S-curve, sometimes thigh-high, open the mouth and strike or lunge at the enemy while giving forth a soft hiss,” MacGregor said.

If a person backs off, the snake will quickly calm down and try to crawl away, he said.

“I suspect the snake in the cage and the gentleman trying to get at the snake probably had the rabbits running about so much that they injured themselves on the chicken wire inside the cage,” Bonney said.

MacGregor and Greer are disappointed that the snake’s life was taken.

The Morehead News contacted Oesch to let him know what type of snake was being housed in his refrigerator.

He said he knows what black rat snakes look like. He once took a black rat snake to Rowan County Christian Academy, where his children attended summer camp. Most of the children who participated in the camp played with the snake, Oesch said.

He insisted he is not a snake killer. He likes snakes. In fact, he said, since his sci-fi like experience, he caught an injured black rat snake. He decided to nurse the snake back to health. His children help him feed the snake and he lets each of them pet the snake, under his supervision.

He decided to catch what he called a “bull snake,” which he said is in the hognose family. He wanted to show the newspaper the difference between those two snakes and the one he killed.

The snake he killed had a rectangular head, he said. The bull snake in his aquarium did not.

After going back to Oesch’s home to take more photos, The Morehead News presented those photos to MacGregor.

“This shows the problems that we have with the use of common names,” MacGregor said. “The people who use field guides have one set of names but the people who learn the wildlife from friends and relatives know the same animals but have different names for them.”

He said the “black rat snake” being housed at Oesch’s home is actually a black king snake, which is the most widespread type of king snake in Kentucky and is fairly common in the Morehead area. The other snake is a black rat snake.

“The same species that went after the rabbits,” MacGregor said.

He said he has been bitten by thousands of snakes and not one has ripped a piece out of him.

He understands Oesch believes what he saw was real.

The only explanation MacGregor can offer to back the story up is this: “Snakes are sort of like people. Some are calm and others are just plain mean.”

Bonney said it is important to note that it is illegal to possess native wildlife, such as cottontail rabbits, without a permit.

Oesch said he plans to release the rabbits when they are old enough to defend themselves against other forms of wildlife.

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