Most of our snakes eat mice. Our cottonmouth eats fish. The
plains hognose snake eats mostly toads in the wild, so when Steve saw one next
to his tomato plants, he grabbed it and told me to go give it to the hognose!
He must have been hungry, because the second I dropped the toad in he was
attacking it.
Warning: pictures below!
Hognose snakes are not venomous, but they have specialized
fangs that help them kill toads. A toad’s natural defense is to puff up so that
it is too big to swallow. The hognose is able to use its fangs to essentially
perforate the toad over and over until it can’t hold the air.
Some of these may look like duplicate photos, but the snake
and the toad kept going back and forth in the tank!
After all that the toad got away and it started all over
again.
This happened several times! When I had to leave, it didn’t
look much different than when it had started, but the toad was leaking just a
little blood.
The next day I came in to see a very big lump of a very
satisfied snake.
Now Steve is lamenting that he needs to get another toad for
his garden, because the bugs are eating up his tomato plants.
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