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Yesterday I was walking in the woods, and became aware of a snake a few seconds after it had caught a frog. It had ahold of the frog's right foot, and at first I thought there was a good chance that the frog would get away. I figured that the snake would have to release the frog to get a better grip, and that the frog, which was kicking fairly wildly at that point, would get away. The frog had a smear of blood just behind its left eye, so it may be that it had already gotten away from the snake once.
My initial thought was "oh, poor thing", and a desire to free the frog. I didn't though, for a number of reasons. For one thing, what about the snake? It has to eat too. Secondly, I figured that there was a good chance that the frog would die of shock or infection from its wounds anyway, so it might as well go to feed the snake. Third, I wasn't sure how to do it without risking getting bitten. I thought about pithing the frog to put it out of its misery, but I didn't really have anything long and sharp enough that I would have been confident that I wouldn't have increased the frog's suffering, so I just let the drama play out. The snake kind of flowed up the frog's right leg. It's lower jaw was moving in such a way that it appeared to be pumping something into the frog with it. The snake wasn't one that I recognized as being poisonous, and it didn't have venom pits beneath its eyes (and I thought that they injected poison with their upper teeth, anyway). A couple of times it lost ground as the frog struggled, and the leg, when it slid from the snakes' mouth, was somewhat flaccid, with a dull grey brown that contrasted sharply with the rest of the frog's green coloration.
I expected the snake to have some trouble once it got up to the point where the leg joined the body--"how was it going to get that thing down at that angle?", I thought, but it waited patiently, and eventually the frog seemed to cooperate,putting its left foot right next to its right leg and holding it there until the snake had both legs securely in its mouth. Then the snake just kind of flowed up over the rest of the frog. For a little while it looked as though the snake had a big head and little arms, but eventually the snake got its mouth around the arms, and shortly thereafter the whole frog went down. Earlier the frog had seemed pretty panicked, but I think it was in shock by the time both of its legs were in the snake.
During the eating of the frog the snake was relatively docile toward me. He tried to crawl away from me kind of half heartedly, but didn't really resist much when I pulled him back. He was still fairly docile immediately after he got the frog down--he just sat there, occasionally opening his mouth kind of like he was burping. If I had to guess, I'd say that opening his mouth like that was probably done to aid the muscle contractions pushing the snake down--it seemed to coincide with them.
Once the frog was about a third of the way down the snake's body, the snake became much more active, checking me out with his tongue and then hurrying away. I kept pace with him for about 10 more minutes, and then went back to my walk.
My wife, when I told her about it, agreed that letting the drama play out was the only thing to do, but said that she wouldn't have stayed to watch. I personally found the whole thing fascinating. I felt sorry for the frog, but given the opportunity, I was pretty excited to get to watch a snake in the wild feed that way. It was cool--until the snake got the frog down, I was no more than a foot away from it. After its mouth was free I backed up a bit, but I was still only about 2 feet from it (although poised to jump back if it became at all aggressive toward me).
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I think it would be pretty cool to watch that in the wild. AN I think my raction would have been simular but I can't say for sure since I've never been in that postion. To bad you didn't get pictures that would have been cool.
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I saw the same thing this summer, except that the snake slithered into the underbrush shortly after I spotted it with the frog in its mouth, so I didn't get as much drama as you did. I would definitely have let the snake keep the frog—heck, it worked hard for that meal; in fact, that's what I did. The slightly freaky thing was listening to the frog scream. I'm not even joking. It was eerie. I can't describe it.
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Yeah, this frog was screaming too, for a little while.
I take it your snake caught the frog by the foot too? I had assumed that that was a fluke, and that they generally ate all of their prey head first.
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I would have watched. I don't think the thought of robbing the snake of its meal would have even crossed my mind..
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If I didn't know better I would think you were psychoanalyzing us. Oh wait, I don't know better.
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I'm not sure that I would've watched unless it was a snake-eating-mouse, which my teacher believes might truly exist (in a not-so serious way).
While feeding our class snake last week, this topic came up. Everyone snickered when the mouse walked to the snake, clearly not anticipating its encroaching death. About thirty minutes later, my teacher gave the snake a second mouse. When the snake approached this mouse, it batted at the snake and tried biting it. Nevertheless, he became Poe's dessert. My teacher later mentioned that feeder mice and mice used in labs are bred specifically "to be docile and trusting, but mice in the wild might actually try to fight for their lives". If this is true, I find it to be somewhat sinister, breeding living things to die.
Truly though, Noemon, I find your encounter interesting and infrequent.
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Kama, Yay for Le Petit Prince! As soon as I read your post I knew that's what the link was going to be. Posts: 1635 | Registered: Aug 2002
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How fascinating! Some of what you observed was the snake actually unhinging and rehinging its jaw in order to swallow the frog (that "burping" motion you mentioned). No wonder it was so docile!
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My cat Mouse once ate a chipmunk from the back end forward and it also screamed. <shudders> Nature red in tooth and claw. This post reinforces my desire to work out a way to become a vegetarian.
Yes, it's fascinating, but in a horrible way. I do appreciate how innocent the predator is in such situations. It's not that they are cruel or cold hearted. Just that they don't see prey as being something that has feelings, something with which to identify. But murderers are the same. They have the same innocent evil. Nazi guards in death camps. The same. Workers in slaughterhouses. Makes me stop and wonder what evil do I do and think nothing about it, exactly zero?
Gives me the screaming meemies.
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I don't think that the causing of the pain is evil in and of itself. And I wouldn't raise murderers to the level of animals. I doubt they're performing mating rituals or can find no other food.
When animals begin killing for fun and burying the bodies in the desert, then I'll think them evil.
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Noemon, oh cool! I think I would have done the same thing. I'd have loved to see that.
ak, people have free will. Animals act on instinct. The examples you gave are NOT analogous. In fact, none the people you listed was even acting solely for survival.
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I would also have thought, "Poor frog." And I would have watched. How often, in our daily lives, do we get to see the natural world in operation without a television set as the medium of our observations?
I remember one time there was a small dead bird next to my driveway. I didn't remove it, I just let it lay there and kept track of its natural process of deomposition - which went fairly slowly, as it was winter. (Also, the cold helped to keep it from getting too ripe-smelling.) At first, I thought this was a morbid thing to do. But, again, I realized that it was a wonderful way to see how nature really works.
Thanks for a beautiful, wonderfully observed post.
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I never feel such a huge divide between the choices people end up making and the things animals do. People start out as children, acting blindly out of fear or habit or reaction, and most of what they do as adults seems not much more carefully thought out or examined. Certainly much heedless causing of pain goes on in our species as in others. Of the people one knows, what percentage of them examines anew every commonplace of their society and decides independently the rights and wrongs thereof? Almost none, in my experience.
[ October 21, 2003, 11:27 PM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
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It's odd you bring this up, because in Bill Peet's autobiography he talks about how once when he was a kid catching frogs in a creek, a snake (a cottonmouth I believe) darted out of it's hole, grabbed a frog, and retreated. Bill and his friend grabbed ahold of the hind legs of the frog and pulled until it was released, but by the time they got it free the frog was already dead, and they had only deprived the snake of a meal.
Just thought it would be an interesting second hand anecdote.
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How would you have done it? Just grabbed and pulled?
Fugu, what is the title of Bill Peet's autobiography? I've loved Peet's books ever since I was old enough to have an opinion (especially Wump World), and would love to read his autoboigraphy.
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Jenny -- It was also interesting watching the snake's jaw while it was going up the frog's leg--it would advance first one side, and then the other. I'm not sure how it was able to free its teeth to do that, frankly.
Once it got the frog all the way down, I was shocked by how tiny its head turned out to be.
Also, I noticed, in the lower jaw, a raised pit that looked almost like a socket, about where you'd expect a prominent fang to be.
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See, it's funny, just yesterday my cat and dog were scrounging around in our basement and i heard some high-pitched squeaking and went to investigate. They were both gleefully chasing a baby mouse around the floor, and my dog would occassionally pick it up in her mouth, walk around for a little, and then put it back down and chase it again. The cat kind of swatted at it every now and again. Finally, my dog picked it up and started to bring it upstairs. I freaked, because a) i had just seen her kill a mouse and b) dead mouse in house = not good. So i slammed the door closed and wouldn't open it until she dropped it. She finally did and i let her upstairs and the mouse was just lying there on the top step.
I closed the door with the cat still downstairs and a few minutes later i heard the squeaking again. Open the door, what do i see but the mouse on a lower step, cowering in a corner as my cat played with it, batting it with her paws and then occassionally biting down on it, and then releasing it. Well, i couldn't deal with that. I pushed the cat away and coaxed the dazed but seemingy unharmed mouse onto a dustpan and carried it outside and set it free in our wood pile.
If it had occurred in the wild, or if the mouse had been obviously injured, I probably would have let it play out. But my cat and dog are well-fed, domestic, spoiled little things and I didn't like that they were "playing" around with this mouse. Neither of them looked like they had any intention of eating it, just biting it and playing with it until it died. That shouldn't disturb me, but it does and I wanted to stop it. Is that a rare thing for people to do?
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About 10 years ago, my dog (a fantastic white german shepherd who I miss terribly) caught a wild turkey. He had it by the neck, but hadn't yet done it any real damage (hadn't shaken it to break its neck, and hadn't drawn blood), so I made him give it to me. The bird was in shock, so it didn't try to get away from me or anything. I carried it out into the woods and set it in a safe spot--kind of a briar patch--where predators would be unlikely to get it before it had a chance to collect its wits and head out. I checked on it a few days later, though, and discovered that it had died, presumably of shock. I felt really bad for that bird. I should have just let my dog kill it quickly.
So I guess what I'm saying, Leonide, is that my reaction wasn't all that different to yours with the mouse.
I actually had to search for it, as I don't have the book here. It's a great book, and filled with illustrations (of course).
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This actually happened when Ron, the boys and I went on a walk around the lake where we were camping. As we walked on the boardwalk to the fishing dock, we saw a huge frog. Only we noticed that one of it's legs was actually a rather short, fat snake. We think it was a copperhead. Anyways, both the frog and the snake were moitionless. It was overcast, and they were essentially the same color as the mudbank they were on.
We pointed them out to the boys. Since they didn't move at ALL, we started spitting on the snake to see if it was alive. It finally moved and must have lost its grip on the frog, because the frog jumped away and dove into the lake. The snake went after it.
We weren't trying to 'save' the frog, we just wanted to see them move a little. It was a bit on the chilly side, so they were sluggish. Anyways, it's always cool to see nature at work.
I DID interfere when my over-fed kitty, Aloysius, went after a huge chipmunk. It was easily the size of a rat, and was standing up on it's hind paws batting at her.I had a guest who, as she sat by the huge windows in my kitchen, was horrified by the display. So I trudged out and made Aloysius let it go. It ran up a tree, and she shot up after it, bounding out of my arms and coming back down with it in her jaws.
So I got her to drop it and brougt her in until it got away into another yard. It wasn't bleeding or anything. Everything seemed to be moving. *shrug*
I might have stopped her even if I hadn't had company. I rescued a snake from the kitties once. I like snakes. They are so sleek and shiny.
I let the kitties have the voles and the occasional bird (they are fantastic tree-climbers). Honestly, I've never seen them in the act of killing a bird. But I prolly wouldn't let them eat anything cuter than they are. They eat well, they just like the hunt.
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My dogs, in the past, have been very enthusiastic about chasing things, but rarely caught anything. My cats, on the other hand, brought in mice, squirrels, rats, snakes, birds--you name it, if it was smaller than they were, they brought it in.
One dog, the german shepherd I mentioned above, was actually a very good hunter He had to be--he'd lived on his own in the country for almost a year before I adopted him. I think that he subsisted on cats, rabbits, squirrels, and the occasional chicken. He was very fast, and could run down rabbits, and was able to psych squirrels out, barking them out of their trees and then killing them when they got to the ground. I always distracted him when I saw him at it, and helped his prey escape, because like others have said, he didn't need the prey for food.
One interesting thing about him--he was very bright, and I could mark an animal as protected by picking it up and holding it while he sniffed at it. I protected all of the cats I came across this way.
Anyway, with both the dog and the cats, it doesn't bother me terribly when they bring in something they've killed, but if I have the opportunity to prevent the killing, I will without a second though. They just don't need the meat.
Oh, one other thing about the snake. After it had gotten the frog down, and before it started checking me out with its tongue, it rubbed its mouth and the sides of its head on the ground repeatedly. If its scales hadn't been relatively glossy, I'd have thought it was trying to get its skin to start peeling; it was that kind of a motion.
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When Avatar used to bring me live chipmunks, I thanked him profusely (a LIVE chipmunk is just about the nicest present a cat can give you) but I didn't eat them. I just pretended to and turned around and let them go in a spot where Avatar couldn't see them running away. Poor things were usually petrified with fear and took a bit of coaxing to get them to run. I'm sure this is because running away is a stupid thing to do when a big predator is watching you. Freezing until the predator loses interest and goes away is much smarter.
What's bad is that possums have that same freeze fear reaction to oncoming cars. In this case it's not terribly smart.
I once found a mouse in a paper mill that was stuck to this extremely sticky paper the mill was using to kill mice with. It seemed so cruel. Dying of thirst like that. I unstuck it and put it outside in my warm toboggan under a tree. It was so hard to get it unstuck without hurting it. I think I hurt its little paw fingers getting them loose. It squealed as I freed them, though I did my very best to be gentle. The stuff was quite sticky. I don't think the mouse had much of a chance out there in the cold, with an injured paw, even inside a warm donated toboggan, but if I were in trouble and some huge being came along and wanted to help me, I would not count it as much help if they only decided to kill me to put me out of my misery. I think I would prefer they left me alone instead. I think I would appreciate any help that gave me any sort of a chance at all. Even a small one. Life has an awful lot of struggling and suffering associated with it. Yet there is dignity in that struggle. To kindly kill me is not what I call being any help.
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Anne Kate, with those sticky traps, if you hold the trap at an angle and pour vegetable oil over its surface, it works its way under the mouse and frees it. In the past we've had mouse infestations that we've had to get rid of using a catch and release program using sticky traps and oil. I still hate to do it, because being stuck down obviously terrifies the mice, but it's better than traditional traps, and they're too wiley to fall for the kinder live traps I've tried.
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Noemon, I'm glad to know that in case it comes up again. Of course I had nothing of the sort available to me at this paper mill. I was having to do this subtly. I sort of disappeared for a while and then showed up later not mentioning what I'd done. Of course the paper mill is just purging itself of vermin, from their point of view, and would look askance at someone who sided with the vermin. And the mill was my customer.
I hate it that it was wintertime. This mouse definitely seemed a little indoor creature. Poor little thing.
I wonder what on earth it thought. I can't get over the feeling that we are sort of like gods to the other creatures, and that we ought to act like proper gods. That we ought to be universally benevolent and that we ought to love each of them for themselves. After all, isn't that how we want God to treat us?
Perhaps we've only been infesting His planet now for all these billions of years, and He's trying to establish a humane catch and release program.
Drive By was hit by a car as a kitten, of course, and was a feral cat before that. Then I adopted her and after a purgatory of being sick and having to have health care, she landed in this nice place. I wonder if she believes in cat heaven now, where the temperature is always controlled and there's soft beds to sleep on and all the food you want is available all the time? In a way her life here in soft suburbia is a happy afterlife to the life she must have led as a kitten. In a way our life here in soft suburbia is idyllic too. In a way, this is heaven. We must have been extremely virtuous in our past lives to be here now.
[ October 23, 2003, 08:35 AM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
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Tom and I had mice in our garage and it pained him to have to kill them so we got a nice little plastic box with a one way swinging door. Every morning I would check the little box and the same mouse would be sitting there looking terrified. I would release him out into the back yard away from the garage in hopes that he would find someplace else to live, but he kept coming back. I told Tom that if I found him five times, I would put the real trap out, so the fifth morning Tom went out to the box, put it in the car and drove out to a local prairie restoration park and released the little mouse. *giggle*
Don't get me wrong, I like mice, but they need to stay outdoors where they belong.
My previous work also included sampling streams with automatic water samplers. We built nice little huts that the mice loved and mostly I let them be until they would start to chew on my wires. Silly mice. The worst hut had twelve mice in it and I was getting ready to put out some poison because it was getting so bad. I opened up the hut to find three mice and a nice big fat snake who had feasted well. After much courage, some deep breathing, and a little persuasion I got the snake to exit the back of the hut and not out towards me by wiggling the sampler slowly, but I remember thinking it was funny that the remaining mice went scurrying over the snake to get out of the door. Here was this snake eating all their family and they didn't even know he was a predator.
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Yeah, you have to be careful to let the mice go free far away from your house (and other people's houses). They'll tend to come right back home if they can figure out how to get there.
I have really mixed feelings about mice. On the one hand, they're beings, and I respect that. I don't bear them any ill will, and would prefer to just let them live. On the other hand, left to their own devices they'll chew your wiring and crap all over all of your food that they don't actually eat, and can carry disease, so you can't really let them run wild in your house.
I have yet to find a live (non-sticky) trap that consistently works on them. Some mice will generally fall for them, but enough don't that in my experience you just end up with smarter mice in your house, which is of dubvious value.
I haven't had to resort to a conventional trap in years. I really hate them. If they could be guranteed to instantly kill the mouse that would be one thing--still not something I'd be happy with, of course, but sometimes that's necessary, unfortunately--but it isn't all that unusual for them to just maim and pin the mouse, and I try to keep my torture of beings to a minimum.
That abhorrance of torture is also why I absolutely refuse to ever use poison to take care of mice. I've come across the bodies of mice that died of poisoning, and from the position of their bodies it's been fairly clear that all of them died in intense pain. I don't like poisoning bugs either, but this summer I had to resort to it with an ant infestation. I still feel bad about that.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I agree. The poison is terrible. Just the only thing that worked out in the field. Its a neurotoxin. The poor little mice twitch and die a terrible death. I would not suggest it for home use at all.
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We got some mice in our first house (in the basement) the first winter we were there. We used the catch and release traps. They worked okay.
Then we found out we had a big blacksnake in our basement walls and in the crawlspace under the part of the house where the basement wasn't. But we had a ZERO mouse problem.
We finally caught the snake and released it in a large wooded preserve. The mice came back. Then we got another snake, following the food supply.
Luckily, the people who bought our house considered the blacksnake skin they spotted in the crawlspace a good sign.
SS-- it was 7 feet below the boardwalk, and we weren't going down the mud bank to poke it, so spitting seemed like the next best thing. If you ever faint around me, I promise I'll use icewater. Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I wouldn't mind if a blacksnake or two colonized our house. My wife is squicked out by the idea for some reason though.
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One thing you have to remember about "rescuing" prey is that the animals may already have damage to their internal organs and inevitably will die. You are also depriving their predators of a hard-won meal. The predators' bodies are not capable of digesting vegetarian meals, so they MUST kill to live. A predator's life is full of difficulties - to hunt, capture, and consume prey takes lots of energy. To take the food away after the predator has worked so hard is just as cruel as letting your pet see you fix its dinner and then not allowing it to eat for several days. Many predators live by feast or famine. They starve for a while, and each meal is crucial to their survival.
Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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I know that. I always felt very sorry for the wolf children who didn't get a meal in the story of the clever little red hen who substituted a rock in the bag and sewed it back up in my Gateway to Storyland. I loved the cats and dogs and wolves and foxes in all those stories. Predators are given a bad rap. Especially since humans ARE predators.
Yet how can one not side with the weak against the strong? How is missing a single meal comparable to losing one's life? I understand that life is unfair and harsh. I must do what I can to ameliorate that feature of life when I get the opportunity. I must try to make it fairer and less harsh in every way I can. Some people call this futility but I call it what I'm here to do.
[ October 25, 2003, 11:58 AM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
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