How to Skin a Snake
Scaling New Skills With South Carolina Naturalist Rudy Mancke
Rudy Mancke, naturalist and distinguished lecturer in natural history in the School of the Environment at the University of South Carolina, mesmerizes students on the first class meeting by detailing how to skin a snake.
Since childhood Mancke has been fascinated with snakes and posed unending questions to family and teachers. When the answers he received didn’t mesh with what he observed, he went to the library and read everything he could find on the subject.
A friend since childhood recalls spending a night catching snakes with Mancke on an intended fishing trip.
In his work as Curator of Natural History at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, Rudy created a poster on Common Snakes of South Carolina used extensively as a teaching tool throughout the state.
Rudy Mancke brakes for snakes! If there is a snake crossing the highway, he most certainly allows it to cross safely. If there is a roadkill snake, he will stop to pick it up and put it into one of the bags he carries in his car. Back home he skins the snake.
Below is Mancke’s step by step recipe for skinning a snake.
- Get rid of the head and tail. Cut them off.
- Split the belly down the center.
- Pull and separate the body from the skin.
- Find a board long enough on which to stretch the skin.
- Put nothing on the skin. (no salt or preservative)
- Place the wet side of skin on the board and stretch.
- Use thumbtacks to secure the skin to the board.
- Placing the board upright, dry the skin outdoors for 5-7 days.
- After dry and while still on the board, brush off the scales with your hands.
- Remove the thumbtacks and the snakeskin is ready for display.
On the week before the final day of class, Mancke demonstrates the above procedure. He takes the boarded skin home to dry and brings it back on the last meeting day to share with students. He divides the skin into as many pieces as there are students and gifts each with a treasured memento.
He sprinkles fascinating facts about snakes throughout class discussions:
- There are several ways to distinguish snakes from lizards. Snakes have no external ears but lizards do. Lizards can blink their eyes and snakes cannot.
- You can identify the poisonous eastern coral snake by remembering a stoplight. If red and yellow touch, leave the snake alone.
- All water snakes have live young. All rat snakes lay eggs. Snakes are either oviparous or ovoviviparous.
- The musk glands in a snake are where the tail joins the body.
- Young black rat snakes feed on amphibians and reptiles. Adults feed on mammals and birds.
- Reptiles continue to grow as long as they live. As snakes grow they shed their skin.
- In the spring it is more likely to find male snakes out in the road. Females stay in the woods.
- A snake has an egg tooth like a bird.
By example and precept Mancke’s students learn to appreciate one of the most maligned and misunderstood natural resources.
Black Rat Snake Skin
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