You never know what you are going to see in your backyard, especially if you live in Florida!
In this case, one Florida resident witnessed a coral snake eating a rat snake and then being attacked and stung by a bee!
Evangeline Cummings, assistant provost and director of University of Florida Online in Gainesville, shared the video via Twitter, asking for help figuring out just what was going on.
Um ok, @UFEntomology and @MartaWayneUF , I believe I just witnessed a BEE ? stinging a CORAL SNAKE ? while the CORAL was dining on a RAT (?) SNAKE ? and I need your support to process this. @UF #FloridaBackyard pic.twitter.com/djbJJGxaUk
— Evangeline Cummings (@EvieCummings23) October 17, 2019
A doctoral student at the University replied:
Provost Cummings, you should talk to @heart2herp, who is a grad student at your univ, she can tell you all about those snakes! The coral would have no trouble climbing that plant. And the wasp most certainly stung it, based on its reactions!
— Emily Taylor (@snakeymama) October 18, 2019
It became unclear how the rat snake ended up in the rose bush, but there is a popular theory:
So we’ve now settled on our favorite theory: rat snake was dropped by a hawk or similar and landed in the rosebush. (But the rat snake is somewhat twisted around the branches so I wonder if when I was dropped it was still partially alive and tried to free itself and could not.?)
— Evangeline Cummings (@EvieCummings23) October 20, 2019