Hungry Snake Forced To Throw Up After Eating 2 Ceramic Eggs

A hungry rat snake in Texas had to throw up after accidentally swallowing two ceramic eggs.

The snake was brought into Austin Wildlife Rescue last week after he swallowed the eggs, which he mistook for food.

The reptile was found in a chicken coop, where the homeowners had placed the ceramic eggs in the hope of encouraging hens to lay in nesting boxes.

Snakes have been known to eat eggs. Rat snakes, members of the colubrids family, can be found across North America. They are non venomous and rarely pose any danger to humans. Bird eggs are a key part of their diet, along with small rodents and birds.

This snake clearly made an error in judgment when swallowing the ersatz ovoids. Austin Wildlife Rescue said in a Facebook post that the eggs can be "extremely painful and harmful" to snakes.

"We take in three or four snakes each year that have eaten ceramic eggs," Hayley Hudnall, executive director of Austin Wildlife Rescue told Newsweek. "Occasionally they need surgery to remove the eggs, but oftentimes we can get them back out without it. We always encourage people to nail or glue the eggs down if they are using them and secure their coop."

The wildlife rescue center said in a Facebook post that this snake must have been "quite the hungry fella."

To get the snake out of its predicament, rescuers sedated it and used "a lot of lubrication" to massage the eggs back up the reptile's digestive tract, and back out of its mouth.

Snakes swallow their prey whole. They are able to swallow objects that appear much larger than their own body by using flexible ligaments on their jaw. By moving their jaw around the object, they are able to swallow large objects, which they then gradually digest.

The ceramic eggs would have been impossible for the snake to digest. The reptile probably would have died if it had not received any treatment.

Occasionally snakes will accidentally swallow something too big for them to digest. In these cases, they may regurgitate it back up and spit it out.

If not, the snake may die.

Rat snakes are constricting snakes, meaning they do not use venom to kill their prey, rather they coil around it and squeeze until it rungs out of air.

The species tends to avoid conflict with humans and will usually slither away rather than lunge.

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