another wee snake! :)

[squidia]

awoke from a nap to sounds/thuds of Daphne hunting something under my chair. i groggily leaned over to look underneath, and it was a wee dark snake, much the same size of the garter snake i found 2 days ago in the strawberry patch. i locked Daphne in the bathroom, and when I came back to the living room, the snake had wedged itself in between some pages of a magazine (Awwww, literary snake). I grabbed it and took it out to the woods near the cat-free zone. as I was releasing it, I thought it might be a kind I should kill, but I really didn't want to. turns out, it was a black rat snake, and now, i feel a little guilty because they eat birds and bird eggs (along with rodents, of course) and the cat-free zone is where my birdbath and one bird feeder are (at which, at the time of the snake release, the birds were merrily feasting). it is most certainly NOT a snake-free zone. *le sigh* oh well! it was an adorable small snake, and although rat snakes can supposedly climb trees like it's nothing, I doubt they can climb chain link fences. the birds will just have to perch on the top edge of the fence, then!

EDIT: wanh, and they eat other snakes too! garter snake in the strawberry patch, beware...