Show & Tell
This seemingly innocuous image of a corn “wearing” her water bowl, prompts me to share the details of this not-so-uncommon SMR event. All of my adult corn snake cages have such a bowl, into which I set a plastic deli cup for water. I don’t have to wash the ceramic bowl very often, but an unforeseen advantage to such a watering system is that less than one female per year lays eggs in water–in the absence of having a damp Sphagnum Moss nest box. No, I don’t leave such water bowls in cages of females that are about to lay eggs. After introduction of the nest box with damp Sphagnum Moss, I leave a small water bowl in the cage, large enough to hold an adequate level of fresh water, but too small to lay eggs into? In the case of the females that exhibit that they are about to lay a same-season second clutch of eggs (approximately six to eight weeks after their first clutch of the season), since I do not re-introduce males to those adult females, if they exhibit small oval bulges where their eggs are, I often do not give them a nest box. This is because, most of the time, when they appear small, they’re usually infertile. Check out the next pic to see what usually happens if I make a misjudgment about egg sizes? . . .