Naturalist's Blog

This is a blog describing the adventures of the naturalists working at the nature center at Omni-Amelia Island Plantation Resort. Amelia Island is the northernmost barrier island on the east coast of Florida, by Jacksonville. Omni-Amelia Island Plantation is a "green" resort and is a beautiful place to lead nature tours,where you never know what we'll come across.We also receive animals that have been injured or abandoned and are charged with ensuring they get the care they need.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Amber's feast

Amber is a yellow rat snake who lives around the nature center. We welcome her around the control the rat population for us. On Tuesday he/she decided to give us a real nature show. Guests had been seeing her in front of the nature center all afternoon. All of the sudden Kathy, who works in the shop part of the nature center, started yelling for me to come. Here's what we saw...apparently Amber caught a meal! We watched as she kept her body wrapped around the unfortunate rabbit.

We thought it was too big for her to swallow, since snakes have to swallow their food whole. To our fascination, she managed to eat it.

Here you can see the "lump" in her belly. It will take her awhile to digest the meal...bones and all! She probably won't need to eat again for a month now!
this video shows her using her muscles to get the meal down her throat. Notice how she has stripes, but you can't see the other pattern of her scales until they are expanded to fit around the food.