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October is Ferrebeekeeper’s big month! In year’s past we have featured special theme weeks on the undead, the flowers of the underworld, the children of echidna, and flaying. Don’t worry: there is plenty of macabre Halloween material coming up for spooky season this year. In the meantime, to tide you over, here is a winged serpent wearing a crown. Maybe it escaped from the serpent bearer!
The southeastern crowned snake (Tantilla coronata)
Today’s post combines two major Ferrebeekeeper topics to get an unexpectedly mild result! I imagined that by combining crowns and serpents I would get some sort of spectacular king cobra or a mythological crown made of golden serpents and rubies but what turned up instead was the Southeastern crowned snake (Tantilla coronata), a slender dusky-colored snake with a little sand colored diadem.
The crowned snake is indigenous to the American Southeast from southern Virginia down through the Carolinas and Georgia to the northern panhandle of Florida. Unlike the regal snakes of my imagination, the crowned snake is a tiny snake which measures from 15 to 20 centimeters long (6 to 9 inches) and lives on small arthropods like scorpions, spiders, and insects. Although not dangerous to people or mammals, the crowned snake possesses an extremely mild venom which it slowly chews into its prey like a old man deliberately eating a biscuit.
Hmm, not what I expected from a crowned serpent!
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