Houston, we have nature.
Tonight I caught a black rat snake in my workshop. I was putting away the battery charger for the lawn mower and went to pick up my weeding gloves so they would be in the garage when I needed them tomorrow evening. I took a step toward the stack of half-unpacked boxes and saw the snake dropping in between two of them from the corner of my eye. A few steps closer and a moment to be sure and indeed, it was a small (about 30 inches) black rat snake. (I wanted to make sure before I grabbed - I was pretty sure it wasn't anything dangerous, but grabbing a black racer, which looks a lot like a black rat snake, will get you bit in about ten places in the space of as many seconds. Black rat snakes are, in general, much mellower.) It has been years since I have seen one of these guys in the wild (is my workshop to be really "the wild"?), but I'm still pretty good at catching/handling them. The snake and did a little bonding and I took him to the other side of the back yard fence and sent him on his way.
I actually don't mind him being in the shop - it will keep the mouse population under control and they will stop building nests in the drawers and in my stuff. However there is a momma bird trying to hatch a clutch of eggs in a nest she has built in a hole in the interior wall (a swallow, I think - I know my snakes much better than my birds). The nest will get cleaned out once she is done with it. So I let the snake know he was welcome in the garage once the birds were gone.
(I need to remember to talk to faeflitt about this. While I find a stumbling across a snake in my workshop exciting... my former city-girl-wife is still adjusting to sharing our living space with this much nature. I suspect a large black snake jumping out at her from a random stack of boxes would be a panic attack at the minimum and quite possibly a heart attack at the extreme.)
Snake taken care of and it being too dark to continue with yard work, I decided to take my ice water and go appreciate my pond. We have at least four species of frogs/toads living in the yard that I can identify by call (spring peepers, grey tree frogs, green frogs, bullfrogs and the occasional toad). I'm pretty sure we have a turtle or two. (We definitely had a fully grown american snapping turtle in the lagoon - I know because we found him during the home inspection. I think the ice stroms the past winter were too much and he froze. But, if there was one, there are probably others. Snapping turles are fascinating creatures.) Plus squirrels (lots of squirrels and they all taunt Clare in the morning), tons of red-wing blackbirds, turkeys and who knows what else. Every time I step outside seems to bring a new discovery. I haven't seen any box turtles on the property yet, but I am sure they are here.
Plus, the smell and feel of the place is much like my Grandparents' in Nebraska. I feel at home here. No regrets about moving to Missouri.
I actually don't mind him being in the shop - it will keep the mouse population under control and they will stop building nests in the drawers and in my stuff. However there is a momma bird trying to hatch a clutch of eggs in a nest she has built in a hole in the interior wall (a swallow, I think - I know my snakes much better than my birds). The nest will get cleaned out once she is done with it. So I let the snake know he was welcome in the garage once the birds were gone.
(I need to remember to talk to faeflitt about this. While I find a stumbling across a snake in my workshop exciting... my former city-girl-wife is still adjusting to sharing our living space with this much nature. I suspect a large black snake jumping out at her from a random stack of boxes would be a panic attack at the minimum and quite possibly a heart attack at the extreme.)
Snake taken care of and it being too dark to continue with yard work, I decided to take my ice water and go appreciate my pond. We have at least four species of frogs/toads living in the yard that I can identify by call (spring peepers, grey tree frogs, green frogs, bullfrogs and the occasional toad). I'm pretty sure we have a turtle or two. (We definitely had a fully grown american snapping turtle in the lagoon - I know because we found him during the home inspection. I think the ice stroms the past winter were too much and he froze. But, if there was one, there are probably others. Snapping turles are fascinating creatures.) Plus squirrels (lots of squirrels and they all taunt Clare in the morning), tons of red-wing blackbirds, turkeys and who knows what else. Every time I step outside seems to bring a new discovery. I haven't seen any box turtles on the property yet, but I am sure they are here.
Plus, the smell and feel of the place is much like my Grandparents' in Nebraska. I feel at home here. No regrets about moving to Missouri.