The Speckled King snake

Today I was working on the new house I am building and since I am waiting for materials to show up, going on two weeks now, and not having very much to do until said material arrives I decided to open up the shower drain cover for the first time. What am I talking about? When the slab is poured on a house the plumbers cover the shower drains with plastic box-outs so that when the shower pan is being built you can install the shower drain at the right height. The box-out leaves an empty pit in the slab that accommodates the drain and after it is installed the pit is then filled in with concrete. It is about a foot wide square hole. It's sort of like turning a plastic shoe box upside down and pouring concrete over the top of it. It looks like a black square in the slab. To access them you have to cut the plastic out with a utility knife. Once you cut away the plastic you see the plumbing pipe stub up there poking up out of the original gravel beneath the slab. They poured the slab last May. So about 14 months ago. Today I cut the plastic off of the one in the master bathroom and to my shock there was a snake inside! There is no way for anything to get into one of these box outs. There is a pvc pipe stub up but the pipe was taped closed with duct tape. It dawned on me that the snake might have been there since the slab was poured.

He wasn't a very big snake maybe as big around as an index finger. As I investigated the pit I saw that he had shed his skin pretty recently as best as I could tell. He seemed to be quite unaware of me and I slowly realized that he must certainly be blind if he had been there in the darkness for his entire life. He was so small and the light was dim so it was hard to make out his eyes. I gathered him up with a gloved hand and walked him over to the well lit area and I could see his eyes looked as if they had cataracts over them. They were glazed over. He was blind.

As far as I could tell, he may have subsisted on condensation. What he ate or if he did I cannot say. I looked it up and he is a speckled king snake and we have seen adults of those near the house recently as well. I took the plumbing pipe out and inspected the duct tape and noticed maybe a one eighth gap between the tape and the pipe that may have been a possible entry point for a newborn snake but it would have been an impossibility to escape once it had slithered through the tiny gap.  

I released him into the grass outside the french doors. I shot some video of him as he crawled away. Hopefully he can manage without sight solely through the use of his tongue. I realized later that he probably had never encountered any other creature before in that lonely dark prison.