Adult copperhead (20" TL) observed feeding on a juvenile Western (Texas) Ratsnake (Pantherophis obsoletus) and imaged by Jan Tauer (homeowner) in her garden area. Second image w yardstick shows better detail of the prey ratsnake. Copperhead was dispatched and discarded. Images used with permission of Jan Tauer. Copperhead was alive in the first image and dead in the second.

Male of undescribed species, currently lumped with S. paisano. This male was dug up from his tube and had recently molted. Currently alive in captivity. Same individual as the post here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/46840931.

I found a milk snake wrestling with a chipmunk. When I went over to investigate, the chipmunk disappeared into a hole about a foot away, so I believe she was defending his burrow or babies from the milk snake?

This snake struggled but pealed a 1/2 dried up frog off the road capitalizing on a free meal. I’ve witnessed this numerous times but this is a first of a dried up frog embedded into the asphalt. This snake worked so hard to peal it out.

With Liza Adams

Check this out. Last year we saw a hummer get caught and eaten by a large mantis. The mantis was sitting on one of the feeders. I never heard of that happening before. We’ve been feeding hummers and have had dense populations of hummers at our feeders for 25 years now, and we had never seen this before last year. We have seen several instances of large female black-and-yellow garden spiders catching and eating hummers, but lots of mantises are around and so far as we've seen, they have never caught a hummer until last year.

Today a mantis caught a hummer and is eating it right now. The mantis with its prey is sitting on the persimmon bush/tree that is right by the feeders.

It looks like it could be the same mantis, but I googled mantis longevity and apparently a year is the maximum lifespan, so this has got to be a new mantis. It is possible, maybe even likely that this is the offspring of the huge female mantis that caught the bird last year, as she was the only big mantis in the area we ever saw. Maybe mantis catch hummers all the time, but we just don’t see them do it, and I think it is a pretty rare behavior. This one couldn’t have learned the behavior from a mother she never saw. Is there an inheritable bird-eating trait in that particular lineage? I guess it's a simpler hypothesis that it's a trait for quicker growth or larger than average size, and that just allows them to include hummers on the menu by late summer.