It's late spring and the time of year to start being EXTRA careful in the great outdoors here in the Deep South. There is now a plethora of ticks and mosquitoes and fire ants. And SNAKES! (Remember the video of the king snake I posted here recently? - that one is harmless, and actually wonderful to have in the yard because they eat the poisonous snakes!)
Pictures of snakes meeting their demise have been all over Facebook lately, posted by local friends. In recent weeks we have been reminding the kids more and more to watch where they step in the yard, especially when out walking Buster together in the morning, just the two of them...
Jay came home from school with the kids yesterday to find a scary specimen back by our little pond:
Apparently James ID'ed it before Jay even had a chance to tell him. In explanation, he said "I love all the animals and I like to study the animals that I don't get to see!" (It's a copperhead, in case you don't study snakes as thoroughly as James does.)
(After some observation and a reminder lesson about watching where they step, the copperhead was transferred to an Action Packer via snake stick, sealed in the trunk, then relocated about 10 miles away from our house.)
I suppose it's time to buy a new jug of snake repellent. It doesn't work perfectly, but it helps. While we don't mind the king snake or banded water snakes or corn snakes (some of which might be the ones that used to live INSIDE our house) or rat snakes that frequent our yard, we also have quite the history of copperheads and cottonmouths and rattlesnakes making appearances. For the time being, we've decided not to let the kids walk the dog solo in the morning...
1 comment:
Great job ID'ing the snake James! I've seen a ton of pictures of copperheads this years. Seems to be more than usual (and earlier in the year).
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