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| Salazar, The Classic Corn Snake |
Joining our Camp Foley family this past month was a beautiful Motley “Motley” Corn Snake and her best friend, Salazar, a Classic Corn Snake. These two were captive bred around five years ago and are currently around three feet long. Corn snakes are very calm snakes and make wonderful pets.
First, what do Motley and Classic mean? It all comes down to describing the pattern and coloration of the snakes’ scales. There are over 500 different morphs, or variations, of corn snakes. They could have solid, striped, laddered, or circle patterns and any range of colors. Only five of these morphs can be found in the wild, with the other variations caused by cross-breeding between morphs. The Classic is the most common to find in the wild.
As you can see in the picture of Salazar, they are brightly colored and have a ladder-type pattern down their back. He also has a white and black checkerboard underside. Motley’s variation was first bred in captivity in 1977. Motleys have a circle pattern down the spine and a white underside. There are many variations of Motley and we believe our snake to be a Normal Motley. She has orange and yellow scales making her pattern resemble a nice sunrise!
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| Motley, The Motley Corn Snake |
Wild corn snakes are native to the Southeastern United States, with their largest population being in Florida. Corn snakes are nonvenomous snakes and do not pose any threat to humans. They are actually beneficial to us – they help maintain the rodent population. Their diet consists mainly of mice, rats, and even birds! We feed Motley and Salazar one or two mice once a week. These two can grow up to a length of six feet long and to the age of twenty-three! In the wild, they are likely to live a much shorter life, of around 15 years.
Our resident black rat snake, Lucy, who is native to Minnesota, was thrilled to welcome our new friends. Corn snakes are close relatives to black rat snakes and are also known as red rat snakes! Motley and Salazar have adjusted well to life at summer camp and cannot wait to meet all of the students and campers who come visit!