All we could see at first was our kitty, Jo, lying casually on the concrete swishing her tail back and forth. Then she rolled over to reveal something alive and black....
I take this visit as a friendly Mother's Day reminder to be a little more careful before I stick my arm into the plumbago to pull a weed.Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there - you know who you are. :)
4 comments:
Yikes. Is that a dangerous snake, or just dangerous to one's emotional equilibrium :-)
I know, reverence for all living things, still :-)
Hisss..... we have a family of garter snakes in our stone pile in the backyard. Hisss..... my dog is FASCINATED with them!
Snakes always nearly give me a heart attack... This little fellow was -- I think -- a young black racer with his silky scales and huge orange-red eyes.. and you can't see it in the picture but his belly was a lovely shade of blue. He played dead long enough for our cat to get tired of playing with him - which I've heard racers will do in a pinch.
My herpetology professor in college often told us that positively ID'ing a snake as venomous or non-venomous in the state of Mississippi based on visual inpsection alone is next to impossible... And I always keep this in mind when I encounter one.
But this guy got the benefit of the doubt and was allowed back into the garden after the pictures were taken. Racers will eat anything they can catch which includes mice, other snakes, and garden slugs... That's fine with me. If he'll eat just one baby cottonmouth in his lifetime then he has earned his place in my yard.
I have a healthy respect for snakes... and give them a wide berth.... on never knows if they are friend or foe.
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