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Rat Snake Eats Mouse Trap

A Fuquay-Varina, NC woman who set mouse traps around her house to prevent the pesky rodents from eating the vegetables in her garden was in for a surp

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A Fuquay-Varina, NC woman who set mouse traps around her house to prevent the pesky rodents from eating the vegetables in her garden was in for a surprise when one of the traps went missing. She initially thought that the trap was carried off by her cat, but when she returned to work in her garden, guess what she found? Unbelievably, a four-foot long black rat snake (Pantherophis obsoletus) with a rectangular shaped object in its belly. 

 

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He had swallowed the trap, Barbara Svalina told The Cary News.

Svalina then posted some photos on social media and the question arose with what to do with it. Initially she did nothing, hoping the snake, which she named Trouble, would regurgitate the trap. But after a few days without success, she brought the snake to the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine, which referred her to the Turtle Rescue Team. The Turtle Rescue Team, which is a nonprofit organization run by the students of the university, treats about 300 wild reptiles and amphibians for free each year, went to work on the snake. 

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The Turtle Rescue Team, which renamed the snake Spaghetti, performed a successful surgery on the snake and has since eaten a mouse as part of its rehabilitation. The snake will recover for a while and will eventually be released back into the wild in southern Wake County, NC. 

Svalina hopes to not see the reptile again, as it was the same snake that got caught in some deer netting around her garden just two weeks prior to the mouse trap incident. “He’s not the smartest snake in the world,” Svalina said. Not too smart? Perhaps. But definitely very lucky to have been caught in a trap of a person who cared about snakes!