Saturday, September 8, 2007

Cool day on Stover Lane

It's a beautiful, cool, sunshiny day on Stover Lane. The temperature has dropped to 66 degrees. At a younger age I would have been freezing. (I can remember being cold if there was a breeze at 90 degrees.)

I've been watching two squirrels chase each other up, down, and around my big tree in the front yard. Every few minutes one would stop, then the other. Then one would go looking for the other one as if playing hide and seek.

Watching wild life is such a pleasurable thing. My area of the city is teaming with wild life. We have squirrels, rabbits, turkeys, beaver, deer, birds, snakes, and some kind of animal my dog digs up from the earth. A mole, perhaps?

Did you catch the fact that I have snakes in my yard? I don't tell my family, especially the grandkids......oh, oh, now they know!

When I come across the snakes in my yard we just look at each other, and when they realize I mean no harm they go hide. The very first snake I saw was quite by accident. I was relocating my peonies to the side of the driveway. While digging the hole I unearthed a snake. It was in the fall so that may be why it did not run away. I had to literally put the shovel under his body and remove him from the hole. Then we proceeded to look at each other. I watched his mouth and never saw a forked tongue and it did not have a rattle on its tail so I concluded it was not poisonous. (Does that really mean anything? Wait a minute, don't all snakes have a forked tongue?)

The fun part of all this is that I was able to look this fellow over. This snake was absolutely beautiful. Its coloring reminded me of Arizona. If I remember correctly it had diamond shaped turquoise along the top and bottom of it's body. (I could not find this snake in any book of snakes for my area. I have no idea what it was.)

In the end, I planted my peonie in the hole, he crawled back in, and I have never seen it since.

Time to get some work done. I'll leave the TV off and listen to the birds for music.

Have a blessed day everyone!

2 comments:

Denise said...

Sorry... the only good snake is a dead snake... :) I have had my meetings w/ snakes also. My most interesting one was when I pulled a "belt" out of my dryer and in trying to figure out whose belt it was, I discovered it was a very clean, dry, dead snake!!! We figure he must have got into the dryer thrut he vent from the outside. When I realized it was a snake, I threw it back in the dryer, closed the door & ran thru the house screaming... I don't like "belts" in my dryer at all!!!

Darlene said...

That is down right scary!!! I would have screamed and then fainted...that's for sure!