After supper the night before last, Little M and I went down to the garden to eat some strawberries and maybe some beans & peas, and to check out all the plants and see how they were all growing. The first thing I noticed as I bent down to look for ripe strawberries in the strawberry patch was the distinctive blotching pattern of a gophersnake woven through the strawberry plants!
I looked a bit closer to make sure it was a gophersnake (not a rattlesnake which would have meant removing Little M and heading back down with my snake hook to relocate it a good distance away from the house (but still within it's home range). Luckily it was just a gophersnake, not a small one either, although not the biggest we have seen on the property, and definitely not the biggest one I have ever seen. That's because I moved out west to do a masters thesis on gophersnakes up in British Columbia's Okanogan Valley. Yup, that's right, I studied snakes! So I guess you could say I have a bit of a soft spot for them now, so snakes are welcome in my garden!
I love this! I know just how you feel. :D Go gophersnakes!
ReplyDeleteOh, good for you! I'm still not the biggest fan of snakes, but I'm getting over it (slowly). Last night I pulled a teeny-tiny garter snake out of the garage, and I didn't get the heebee jeebees. So that's progress. I can see the benefit, so it makes me squirm less!
ReplyDeleteOk I admire you that much more now!!! I would have freaked out ran in the house with a definite case of the heebee jeebees!! :) I used to be the same way about bugs in the garden, but I had to get over that because I wanted to have a garden more! snakes...not there yet!!!
ReplyDeleteGreat pest control!
ReplyDeleteI love benign snakes in the garden! Glad it wasn't a rattler. I haven't seen any in my garden in Washington state, but I used to get lots of garter snakes and black rat snakes back in Massachusetts. Always left them alone, they are such good hunters of bad bugs and slugs.
ReplyDelete