Stinky Snake

There are no really gross pictures. You can keep reading.  🙂

For the past several days, when I walk out toward the chicken coop, I smell something dead. I told Vince “I smell something dead over there <—.”  In wife talk, that means will you please go see if you can find it? In husband talk, that means hmm, I can’t smell it from the recliner so I’m not worried about it!

I really didn’t want to find it because I was afraid it was something I didn’t want to see. My imagination can be quite wild!

I had already counted chickens and they were all accounted for. Yes, the little bantam is back and she seems to have lost her desire to live on her own after dark and she also isn’t trying to sit on the eggs and the other hens are back to laying where they are supposed to lay. Unfortunately, I had to buy eggs today.

So, my chickens were all ok. I walked around halfway looking but I really didn’t want to find anything. Then I remembered this plastic netting that we use pretty often. It will keep baby chicks from escaping through the regular chicken wire. It will keep birds off the peach trees. When it’s all wadded up, it’s the best snake trap ever! They get all tangled up in it and can’t get out.

I had avoided looking too closely at this pile but today decided I had to find that smell and yep, there he was . . in the pile of netting we had taken off the peach trees.

You can barely see him over on the left side . . a big fat black rat snake.

He was only a few feet from the fig tree and every day when I’m out there rummaging around and climbing in all the nooks and crannies, I’m thinking . . if I were a snake, I’d hide out in here. It’s cool, shady and damp. Almost every day I’m watering under the big fig tree.

I try to always search around for a snake before going deep under the tree, and I make lots of noise hoping anything under there will leave but the whole time I’m out the picking figs, several times a day, I’m thinking about those blasted snakes. Flip flops? Nope, I’ve given them up. Don’t even own a pair except my house shoe type flip flops that I don’t wear outside. Snake boots? Nope, they are way too hot, too bulky and too much trouble for just walking out for 30 minutes to pick figs. It’s either tennis shoes or rubber boots, neither of which are much protection against a snake but better than flip flops, I suppose.

Last year we saw very few and this year, I think I’ve killed 3 rattlesnakes, and have seen at least a dozen other snakes. And it’s only July, right? Lots of snake season still to come. Vince is pretty lucky that I grew up in a snake infested area or I’d have already packed my stuff and run away to a bit more civilized place. In southwest Louisiana, snakes are just part of everyday life. It’s pretty common to find them inside the house, as well as outside. I guess when you think about that, having the snakes we have here isn’t so bad but it’s still really nice during winter when we don’t see so many of them.