Tiny Bubbles

About six weeks ago my brother John bestowed upon us a rescued animal, a checkered garter snake (Thamnophis marcianus) my son Patrick promptly dubbed "Mr. Bubbles." John, in the course of his duties as a police officer, had plucked it from a terrified housewife's porch.

The snake readily gobbled goldfish (the $ .12 kind, bred to be fed), was nice to look at and seemed to be doing just fine in a cage in the garage.

I've always been fascinated by snakes; their colorful patterns and glossy keratin-coated skins, their behaviors too, but mostly just the fact that they're here at all.

More than 2,700 species of snakes burst out of the Paleocene about 60 million years ago. Today they range across every continent except Antarctica. Some are marine reptiles, some live in trees, some live nearly their entire lives underground. None have external limbs and that's what I find so fascinating: they're basically bellies with mouths and some highly specialized senses, and they've been incredibly successful.

I fed our newest snake four medium-size goldfish right before we left on vacation last week, checked on her with a cursory glance the night we returned and woke up yesterday to a snake cage crawling with miniature replicas. Fourteen tiny Bubbles, to be exact.

When he dropped her off weeks ago, John mentioned the snake might be gravid, thought she felt heavy. After seeing no eggs for weeks and weeks, I kind of forgot about the possibility.

Just like I forgot that garter snakes are viviparous, meaning they give live birth. Some of the newborns still have tiny threads of placenta attached to their belly buttons (I know, I know ... snakes with belly buttons; crazy, eh?).

What the heck do baby garter snakes eat? Smaller fish, says the man at PetSmart. So we load up on red comet minnows, some bigger fish for mom (Mrs. Bubbles, we now assume) and brought it all home. Bubbles devoured her five big goldfish, but the newborns didn't seem to know quite what to do.

Finally, the first one figured it out. Then another. Now only about six of the minnows are still swimming.

In the wild, checkered garter snakes eat all sorts of things -- amphibians and fish, worms and mice -- whatever they can get to hold still long enough to swallow. They can grow to as long as 4 feet, but 24-inch specimens are much more common. That's about Bubbles' size.

Mrs. Bubbles is still pretty skittish around human hands, and likely will never be entirely tame. The babies, though, have no fear of humans and are perfectly comfortably climbing onto a hand reaching into their enclosure.

Because they're relatively docile -- the captive-born animals, anyway -- and easy to keep, checkered garter snakes are common in the pet trade. A quick Internet search uncovered a handful for sale at $15-$30 apiece.

Patrick's not sure what he wants to do with the little ones. He thinks maybe his friend Spencer will take one, if Spencer's mom says okay. Some will probably be set free to patrol our backyard and greenbelt once they're past Blue jay snack-size.

That's going to leave a lot of tiny Bubbles ... anyone want a snake?

Missing, Presumed Eaten

I hate to say it, but I don't think Leo is coming back.

Leo's a male Yorkshire terrier, and his name is scrawled on a large, neon poster taped to the streetlight down at the corner. The Yorkie joins a pair of Lhasa apsos and at least a brace of beloved cats in the neighborhood's milk carton gallery. All this in the past couple of weeks.

I'm pretty sure we're not dealing with a ring of sneaky, sadistic pet thieves. What all these animals have in common are two things: size (small, some might even say "snack" size) and proximity to one or or more of the floodplain greenbelts in the area.

While walking Pete over the weekend, Tamara met a neighbor walking her own dog, and she mentioned that she's been hearing coyotes lately.

Lately? I've heard them off and on since we moved in last summer.

A study in Chicago found that domestic cats make up only a bit more than one percent of urban coyotes' diets; small rodents top the list for prairie wolves in the city, just as they do in rural areas, followed by fruit and deer (each coming in at less than a quarter of the food items found in coyote scat). According to this study, coyotes ate more grass than cats.

In Los Angeles County, local authorities warn residents to keep their cats indoors: "Keep small pets (cats, rabbits, small dogs) indoors. Don't allow them to run free at any time. They are easy, favored prey. Some coyotes hunt cats in residential areas. "

What everyone agrees on is that coyotes are among the most adaptable predators in the world, and there are more now -- in more places -- than there were 200 years ago, despite extensive efforts to control the species.

Coyotes breed in Feb. and March, giving birth to litters of 3-12 pups about two months later. So, we're entering the high food demand period for the wild dogs -- a time when kitties and ankle-nippers look particularly tasty.

Pets are definitely on the menu in Austin.

Here's one of my favorite news ledes ever, in a recent Austin American-Statesman story by Claire Osborne:

Thor, a Chihuahua, barked as he charged out to his Shoal Creek backyard about 3 a.m. on a January morning. That was the last time his owner, Kay Aielli, saw him.

Maybe it's just the juxtaposition of that name, Thor, and the word chihuahua.

In the same story, Randy Farrar, a biologist with the Texas Agrilife Extension Service -- Wildlife Services (and all-around okay guy), joined a City of Austin animal services official in blaming an abundance of available pet food for the recent rash of puppy snatchings in central Austin.

Farrar agreed, saying that coyote droppings he recently found in the area were "100 percent pet food."

"The last coyote I caught was a female on Feb. 19 that weighed 33 pounds, which is pretty large," Farrar said. "She looked well-fed."

Well, yeah ... Chihuahuas can go, what, 7-10 pounds apiece? I guess the definition of "pet food" depends on how you parse those sentences.

Rest in peace, little Leo. And Thor. And Mr. Jingles.

But don't blame the coyotes. They're just doing what they do -- what they've always done -- and we've only made it easier for them, bringing the supermarket to their doorsteps.

[Okay, just so you know, I don't really think it's funny that anyone has lost a beloved family pet. The little girl who knocked on our door, passing out flyers asking for information on her cat, was near tears, three days after the feline disappeared. And I love dogs. I love big dogs more, and Pete's a brute so I don't much worry about him getting snatched, but I do love dogs. I do think it's rather amusing that folks are actually shocked that coyotes are prowling our neighborhoods and preying on animals smaller than them. They're, you know, predators. Second photo by Steve Jurvetson. Photos licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License]