Saturday, June 11, 2005

Kurt found ANOTHER snake!

I borrowed Johnny's, my step-dad, yazoo push mower to cut my 1.6 acre yard because my yardmachine riding mower stopped cutting. I cut the fenced in part of my backyard that is @ 80'x55' with the pushmower and pooped out. Well, Jaba was off today so he decided to take a look at the riding mower. The belt for the blades had jumped off the guides so he was able to fix it for me!!! I got the majority of the yard mowed today except for the fenced in part which now needs mowed, a-gain. I even tied the fence to all but 3 of the fence posts today, too.

Here's where the snake part of the story comes in.... Kurt and I were picking up the limbs that I had mowed around and were putting them in a burn pile that I started during the winter but have yet to burn. Well on our 3 trip to the pile, I hear movement and immediately see a darkgreen and yellow striped (longways) snake, a common garter snake, headed for a tree from the pile. It is between Kurt and me, so for the second time in 2 weeks I have to run past a snake to secure the safety of my youngest son. He only got within 8ft of this one, though. I'm sitting here cringing with chills just thinking about these 2 close calls.

The other snake that I had to wisk him away from was a speckled kingsnake. The first picture in the link is an accurate picture of what it looked like. I read the entire information on the linked page and thought it very interesting that Alexandria, LA, was specifically mentioned. I'm a stone's throw away from Alex.

2 comments:

Sandi said...

I am so glad that Kurt was unharmed. Gotta be careful. Sounds like you have a lot of wildlife around your house.

Carol said...

I am not fond of snakes. Thankfully living in the "burbs" you don't come across them that often. We do have two ponds, so there have been some snakes, beavers, geese, and just recently, a huge snapping turtle!
My kids went on a hike Saturday and they came across a RATTLESNAKE--the biggest one the chaperone had ever seen! He said it was probably 6 ft. long and 6" in diameter! Gulp!