The "Tough Getting A Square Meal Around Here!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  At least for me it was, but for one very large king snake who lives at Forgotten Friend Reptile Sanctuary is was as if something was eating at him.  Actually, he was eating himself.  The founder of the sanctuary, Jesse Rothacker, discovered that one of his rescued king snakes was trying to swallow himself.  Talk about being hungry.  

Now, if you can't stomach looking at or holding snakes, this place wouldn't be for you, but Lancaster County is so lucky to have a fellow like Jesse who takes in all types of reptiles that otherwise might be released into the wild and perish shortly afterward.  So, what do you do when you discover that one of your residents got so hungry that they grabbed the other end of their body and began to swallow it?  Jesse said that it's not unusual to find a king snake biting themselves, but he's never found one that was swallowing its tail.  This particular snake was found to gnaw on itself, but not to the extent that it did when found with its tail about three feet into its mouth.  I showed my wife the photograph in the newspaper that was submitted by Jesse and she turned her head and told me to get it away from her.  

The snake eating itself.

The story in the paper said that Jesse did find scarring on the tail of the reptile which means it must have tried to eat itself in the past. But, to this extent?  Jesse said that this snake seems to always be hungry, but never went to this extent before.  He joked that this snake probably wouldn't do well on the SAT.  Accompaning the online article was a video showing how Jesse was able to get the snake to regurgitate almost half its own body.  After all of its body was regurgitated, it received a bath to get rid of "digestive juices".  All that could be found to show what had happened were small pin pricks where the teeth bit into the body.  The snake has been adopted and will move to its new home in the near future.  Hope the new owner realizes that it must feed the snake often in order to keep it from eating itself once again.  Forgotten Friend Reptile Sanctuary is found in the small village of Elm which is to the north of Lititz, Pennsylvania.  Forgotten Friend is a nonprofit reptile rescue and education group that focuses on the prevention of cruelty to animals.  Its address is not given out since it works with law enforcement.  You can watch the video of the snake's rescue at LancasaterOnline.com.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.