Great Plains Rat Snake
Pantherophis emoryi

Good Grabbers about the Great Plains Rat Snake:

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Great Plains Rat Snakes do not occur in DuPage or throughout most of Illinois. They are limited in distribution to a few counties in the southwestern-most Illinois where habitat suitable for this snakes needs is still unaltered. The Great Plains rat snake’s habitat preference is open grassland, forest edges near grasslands, and open rocky slopes. Though now very rare in Illinois the species was undoubtedly more abundant in pre-settlement times. Prior to the conversion of most of central Illinois to wide-ranging farm fields, this snake would have had a vastly more expansive range in Illinois.

Great Plains Rat Snakes are medium size to large snakes attaining a length of almost five feet long in older individuals, though they are usually seen at half this size and proportionally slender in appearance. Older well fed specimens can look heavier bodied.
Great Plains Rat Snakes feed mostly on warm blooded prey consisting mostly of meadow voles, white footed and/or deer mice, chipmunks, thirteen-lined ground squirrels, ground nesting birds and their eggs. Although in areas where they occur lizards can make up a good portion of their diet. Great Plains Rat Snakes are constrictors meaning they subdue their prey using their body to wrap around the prey animal and by squeezing the animal tightly can prevent it from breathing, causing the prey item to suffocate. Once the prey ceases struggling the snake will typically locate the animals head and begin swallowing it head first. The Great Plains rat snakes as well as other snakes can swallow prey up to two or three times their own diameter, however more often than not their prey items are no more than half again the body girth of the snake.

Great Plains Rat Snakes reproduce after winter hibernation beneath the ground or underneath rocks, slabs and in crevices or anywhere they can stay beneath the frost or freeze line in the ground. Once they emerge in the spring and the snakes cast their post emergence skin shed males will fast until they have satisfied their physiological need to mate. Gravid female Great Plains rat snakes will deposit six to twenty eggs in a small well concealed location where they will incubate and hatch in mid to late summer. The hatchlings are independent and will feed on nestling mice or voles of appropriate size.

Great Plains Rat Snakes are found in southwestern Illinois and throughout much of the southern Great Plains region. There is an Eastern variety of Great Plains rat snake known as the Corn snake however; this species is found throughout southeastern states and the ranges of the two species do not overlap. Corn snakes, also known as red rat snakes are typically more colorful than Great Plains rat snake but patterned similarly. Both species are common throughout their respective ranges.