Don't Tread On Me
I got my laying hens last week and have been setting up paddocks for them. I have done free range all these years, but I want a yard that is NOT a chicken poop land mine. I want ONE pair of shoes that I can just slide on and go to town without inspection and disinfection. Yesterday I went to cover their pen with some bird net. It was lying on the ground for a few days and when I grabbed it, I just about wet my pants. I screeched, dropped it and hopped around a minute, then realized it was not rattling at me.
Photos / video taken with Samsung Luna Pro cell phone
Just a gopher snake, but a gopher snake in trouble.
He had snaked his way into the net but he was not snaking out of it. It was so tightly wound around his belly I was not sure I could even cut the net without cutting him. Snip, snip, snip... little by little I got the net cut off. I was quite pleased with my technique in the end. I would slide the dull side under just one little strand and snip, then move to the next. Maybe a hundred little cuts but I never even nicked him.
A most uncooperative subject!
It was sort of a snake juggling act. Every time I would get some cut off, he would try to wriggle free except that his idea of "free" was back into the net! I admit, I got snippy with him... "What are you, stupid or suicidal?"
After probably ten minutes of very careful cutting and snake juggling, the last bit of net was loosed and he slithered off without so much as a backward glance. That is fine, I really do not expect shows of gratitude from snakes, I have been involved in politics...
Go eat a vole and we will call it even, buddy!
Great job...I would have had to find another volunteer, snakes freak me out.
If it had been a big spider, I would have called someone else. Utterly irrational, how badly spiders get to me!
Yeah I don't take kindly to spiders either...lol
Love this, and BLESS YOU for releasing the snake unharmed. Even if he was ungrateful. ;-)
We used to have a 6' gopher snake that hung out on our place when I was a kid, and we knew it was the same one for years, because he had a broken pattern on his back.
Every so often he'd show up in our neighbor's yard, and she'd call my mom to "rescue" her, who would then calmly pick up the snake and leave. Little did she know that our mom would wait until dark, then release the snake on our side of the hill, farthest from our neighbor's yard.
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Lol! I hope the neighbor brought baked goodies for rescuing her, or something that would be extra sweet for the little secret!
Rattlers are the only poisonous snakes around here, and they ARE around here so he had me doing a pretty good "getaway" jig for a minute. Once I realized he was not rattling, I felt pretty badly, never should have left the net on the ground. He owed me a scolding as much as a "thank you" I suppose!
Yeah, I can relate, I'm regularly rescuing critters that have gotten into watering bowls by accident, then couldn't get out.
I rescued two fireflies this afternoon from a bowl on our back porch, left out for the dogs, though three other bugs weren't so lucky, and had already died.
Pretty much the definition of unintended consequences.
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