Saturday, June 4, 2011

Turf Wars, reptile edition

I was going to post these pictures and tell you that I was now at peace with Mother Nature. After the fire ant incident of a few weeks ago, I felt like you all would think I was going all rambo on nature.
When the kitty and I first saw this guy (actually, I think its a gal) in front of our house last week, I was pretty freaked out and the kitty was in intense slow stalk mode (from the front porch, mind you). Nate wanted me to take a picture so he could see what kind it was.



Come to find out, it is a speckled king-snake. They are really good at killing predatory snakes, so in a way I was ok with it existing in my world.

Fastforward:
Over the weekend Nate and I were weeding and mulching the rhubarb and strawberry patch. They are in a terraced bed out front by the water. I was kneeling on the wooden edge pulling out weeds and spreading mulch. When I stood up, this snake fell out of the wood on to my flip-flopped foot and tried to get away from me as fast as I from it. Nate took a stick and shooed it away.
I asked Nate if he thought it might have built a nest in there and he assured me that the snake hadn't, no way there was enough room for that.
The next morning as I was watering, I saw a big burrow hole and some broken eggs in the area there.
After we went fishing that night, I showed them to Nate. We walked away from it and Nate stepped on the snake and it spun back and tried to bite him.
We both screamed and ran up the hill.
Sunday morning after getting back from work, Nate saw a black rat snake hanging out by the mailbox.
We were at peace with one snake wandering around our yard from time to time, but we are not in the business of fostering a snake sanctuary here. We have a kitty to worry about who sneaks out the front door from time to time, and loves fishing in the boat. We have to be down on our hands and knees weeding our garden out back and the beds out front.
So, on the way home from house church on Sunday evening, we bought these.
Rambo's back.
The end.

6 comments:

  1. Um, this post just gets more terrifying the further I read. May your shots fly straight and true.

    ReplyDelete
  2. By the way, we have a tiny burrow hole in the front bed by our garage door, but I haven't seen an animal that it might belong to. Can you tell if it's a snake just by the hole? Should I be worried?

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's probably not from a snake. Snakes don't usually dig holes, but they will make use of them if they are there. I think it was more likely that the snake and eggs were up in that piece of wood that it fell out of.
    I wouldn't worry about it. If there is a snake, you all are in a populated enough area that it will be scarce.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This cute little snake is the cause of all of the hubbub?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh. My. Lord, Molly. If this all had happened to me, I'd be too dead to write about it afterward.

    ReplyDelete
  6. When I ride into this armed camp, I will be ringing a bell and waving a big white flag!

    ReplyDelete