Juvenile.
A neighbor called a couple of years ago and said there was a snake in
her pottery kiln room and it was trying to swallow a mouse. This sounded very
interesting of course and upon my arrival at the pottery kiln, the snake was still attempting to
eat its mouse. The snake had constricted the mouse but was unable to
proceed with swallowing past a certain point. After several more minutes the hungry juvenile
bairdi finally had had enough and gave up. Although
this setup did not occur strictly in the wild it does possibly indicate that
wild snakes will over estimate their gastronomic abilities on occasion. Photo gracious provided by Lebeth Lammers.