We're well into summer and each evening we usually comment that we haven't seen any snakes on the property this year. Well, lo and behold, our first visitor showed up yesterday evening.
When I first caught a glimpse of him, he was making his way up the back knoll towards the house. Our first order of business is always to leash up Bo, so that he doesn't attack the snake and get bit.
By time I summoned the troops, leashed Bo and made it back around the house, it had already made it into the rocks next to the foundation.
It's impossible to get a snake out of there and as soon as my husband tried, the snake went upwards and through a small opening between the house and block foundation. So, he's either still under there or made it out through the night. We'll never know. This is a King snake and actually quite good to have around. They can survive a bite from a rattler and even kill 'em. Still tho, I'm not thrilled to have any snake around and if we see this guy again, we'll try to catch him in a bucket and move him further out in the country.
With our crazy weather and maybe the fact that I planted my pumpkins a month too early, we are now harvesting some. Lots of big green ones are still on the vines so we should still have several for Halloween.
When I see pumpkins, this intense desire to knit mittens comes upon me! Does that happen to you?
5 comments:
Just a few weeks ago I saw a 1.5 foot long King Snake just crawling along the sidewalk on a a not-too-busy street here in SF. It was during our recent heat wave, and I wished that I had a way to capture it and find a more suitable place to release it, like the park. I also wished I'd brought my camera!
I miss some of the best shots, too! I'm learning to take my camera with me whenever I go anywhere.
Sorry, but snakes give me the willies... Lucky you, harvesting all those pumpkins. Out of several vines only one produced a pumpkin and it actually rotted on the vine. :-(
Ick. I hate snakes. We didn't plant pumpkin this year--didn't need to as we had volunteer ones coming up beside the compost pile. It is rather loaded, so I should be able to can enough from those for 7-10 pumpkin pies, which is about what we make each year.
I know that snakes do a lot of good, but they scare the heck out of me. Same with bats!
It does seem weirdly early for pumpkins, but it's always a good time to knit mittens!
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