Snake Shedding - About to Shed

03.28.2004 - I got a call about a snake in someone's flower bed, and the lady said, "It looks like it's from Village of the Damned"! It has glowing blue eyes!" I arrived on the scene, and found out that she wasn't in fact crazy.  This snake DID have glowing blue eyes.  In fact, the entire body was fairly blue.  This isn't terribly surprising, seeing as how this snake is a blue-phase Eastern Garter Snake, which is a common species here in Central Florida.  Shortly before shedding, the skin becomes cloudier, and if it's tinted with color, that color is more pronounced.  The color shows up best over the eyes.  I've caught quite a few snakes thus far that had cloudy eyes, and these snakes were all about to shed.  That's right, the skin goes over the eyes, and if you find a snakeskin, you will see that the shed skin continues over the eyeballs.  Anyway, this snake looked really neat.  As you might suspect, snakes are somewhat more vulnerable in this state, a bit more apathetic, and with poor vision.  I'd bet that this snake was very close to shedding, perhaps preparing to do so this very day.  I never found out, as I removed and relocated this harmless snake to a safe place.  The customer was amazed to learn that it was not about to stare into her soul and perform mind control tricks on her.

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