ON ACCEPTING THE FRENCH IDEA OF GENIUS:

How cute is this guy? Do you see him? He didn't hide very well. As I exited my jeep, groceries in hand I was all..."Well, hello! How are you doing Mr. Snake? I trust you are keeping my yard free from creepy crawlies. If so, carry on, and keep up the good work. I'll remind people not to poke at you, and to keep Bruce away. What sort of snake are you?"

So I went down my mental snake list: no rattle (check), no markings for other poisonous snakes (check), basic brown stripey snake (check), too small to be a threat (check)...fine by me. It's a garter snake, of course, although a fairly big one in my experience. He's about 2 feet long, and that's on the "damn" end of the spectrum for a garter snake. The ones I've seen/stepped on in the past have been around 1/2 foot shorter. So, I'll keep him. At the very least he's some evidence that there aren't many (if any) really big guys hanging around outside. He is hanging out underneath the azaleas in a prime snake-smorgasbord location: birds hang out there, so do lizards and skinks. There are plenty of bugs scrambling through the underbrush as well. My bet is he's munchin on skinks...I would. And I'm very happy that he's selected an out of the way place to be. He's not IN my garden, or near a Bruce stomping ground. What a very repsectful snake. I suspect that he's probebly been dislocated by some recent tree and brush removal in the neighbor's yard. Poor little fella.

I swear my yard is like the mutual of omaha wild kingdom, or it's like that microcosmos movie.

Some other things I witness quite frequently:
-birds of all kinds including some fancy magnolia warblers, piliated woodpeckers and some sort of parrot thing
-squirrel invasions
-cicadias
-crazy giant beetles of allsorts
-skinks
-lizards
-praying manti (-isi? -ses?)
-butterflies and moths
-nightmarish worms (seriously, some hammerheaded predator worms that look like tiny snakes)
-roaches of allsorts
-centipedes and millipedes (huge!)
-bees and wasps of all varieties
-random dogs and cats
-bats

Things others have seen, but I have not:
-a deer
-a rabbit or two
-a fox thing

Things up the road:
-horses...goddamn horses, always with the goddamn horses!



If I had a chicken would the snake try to eat it? Hmm...I want a chicken.