Georgia Wildlife Federation

Jason Clark, president and founder of Southeastern Reptile Rescue (www.snakesareus.com), is accustomed to confronting the unexpected. It goes with the job.

But even for him, the call he received in mid-September from a Lamar County resident was a surprise. The caller said he'd found an albino snake — canebrake rattler he said — on a road in the middle Georgia county and wanted Jason's help. Skeptical, Jason went to take a look. "I thought he probably had a corn snake or something pretty common."

Sure enough, the little reptile was an albino canebrake rattler (Crotalus horridus). "Very unusual," said Clark. "In fact, it's only the second such snake recorded in Georgia.

"I'm glad the man who found him was concerned and gave us the opportunity to save this snake," he continued. "It's very young — hadn't even eaten its first meal when we picked it up."

Native to Georgia and occurring throughout the state, the canebrake rattler is also known as a timber rattler, although some experts consider the canebrake a subspecies of the timber rattler. According to the Georgia Wildlife Web, a joint information resource of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the Georgia Museum of Natural History, the species averages 36 to 60 inches in length and generally is brown, black, yellow, or pinkish, darkening to deep black toward the rear end and tail, with a series of twenty or so brown or black blotches and cross-bands. A reddish brown mid-dorsal stripe is a visual characteristic. Habitat is hardwood forest, rocky outcrops, bottomland hardwood forests, pine flatwoods and cane thickets.

The rattlers' breeding season is August through October, with five to twenty young snakes born live (not in eggs). Adults eat rodents, rabbits, squirrels, and occasionally birds, other snakes, lizards and frogs.

While the canebrake rattler is not designated with a protected status, some of its preferred habitats are key to the conservation strategies of Georgia's State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP). A top objective of the plan is to ensure that species of those habitats don't continue to decline.

Clark's unusual new charge probably wouldn't have had much chance to survive in the wild. "Rattlers wait for prey, lying partly in the open," said Clark. "They depend on their coloration and patterning to camouflage them; they're not particularly quick movers.

"This little guy would have been so obvious lying in its normal habitat that it probably wouldn't have much chance to catch prey."

Despite initial worry that it might not eat, a few days later the young snake devoured seven baby mice in a period of about a half hour, proving it was perfectly normal in that regard.

Now it gets a weekly meal of baby mice. "We are careful not to overfeed it," said Clark. "In the wild it wouldn't eat regularly. But next spring we'll increase
its food."

Because the weather has cooled, the snake hasn't grown much - the growth rate of cold-blooded reptiles normally slows with cool temperatures. Presently, it's about 14 to 16 inches long. "Very small venomous snakes are difficult to handle and we don't want to stress it, so we'll wait to get an exact length and determine its sex."

It also hasn't molted yet, so, for now, its rattle consists only of the "prebutton" it was born with. Additional segments will result from successive molts. "It's a myth that you can tell the age of a rattler by its rattles," explains Clark. "The number is totally dependent upon how frequently it molts."

Once the snake matures, Clark hopes to undertake a breeding program in collaboration with the Wildlife Resources Division of Georgia's Department of Natural Resources.
Meanwhile, Clark and his wife Sarah, Vice President of Southeastern Reptile Rescue, will be an important part of the Conservation Connection, a unique new feature of the GWF February 2007 Sportsmen's Show, including also Fisharama® and Turkeyrama®, in Atlanta. Southeastern Reptile Rescue, a state licensed reptile exhibitor, provides venomous and non-venomous snake and other reptile removal; and particularly emphasizes education about the value and purpose of snakes and other reptiles.

"Our display this year will be very different from our previous appearances in GWF Sportsmen's shows," notes Clark. "We'll have some exotic or nonnative rattlesnakes and a Nile croc. We want to help people understand why possessing such reptiles is a really bad idea with lots of negative consequences for local habitat and native species."

The little, as yet-unnamed albino canebrake will not be part of February's appearance. Its coming out appearance will come later, Clark concluded.