Thursday - June 11, 2009

Gardening Heroics

Hey - short break - we have a snake (biggest I’ve even seen - probably 4+ feet) entangled in the plastic bird netting that is the grape protection system. I discovered him yesterday at about 5 pm - he is still alive at 10:41 am. We are trying to figure out how to get him out - 1) without expending money, 2) without getting bitten - although he seems to be more flight than fight) and 3) preferably without cutting the heck out of the netting (which now seems impossible) however, since he was alive - I tried using the small shears we have out in the garden - no luck and the tree pruner (give me some distance please) - again no such luck. So I think I will sacrifice one of my forever knives (as they are brand new, I have two paring knives and I think that they might be sharp enough to do the cutting). Did I mention that it is pouring down rain? What fun.

I wrote her back with a couple of suggestions for capturing snakes, and some advice for putting in a couple of plants that are natural snake repellents. And I asked for pictures of course!

Drew, I had the urge to run screaming (or magically levitate as your mom did) - but I’ve been around the most egregious of animals (heck a crocodile in the bath tub) - that my run screaming mode has a kill switch. And then yesterday my ‘oh look at the poor animal trapped - how can I get him out’, mommy mode kicked in.

However, I do know that holding his tail end while hubby was cutting the netting away - my heart was racing at about 200 beats a millisecond.

So here:
The first one, shows you how far away I was taking the first pictures.
The rest are pretty much self explanatory.

I am shooting off a note to Fiskars - can’t believe that the garden shears (which I’ve used to cut the metal tying ‘string’) and the pruners didn’t cut at all but the Fiskars scissors (and older ones at that, they started in my desk) did the trick.

I have never heard about the rue - will look into it. And tell people if they can identify the snake - we’d be much appreciated - would like to know exactly what is roaming around behind us.
Wardmama4

Ok, do we have any herpetologists with snake ID skills here? She didn’t mention that it had a rattle, so it’s not a rattlesnake. But that big diamond shaped head says Viper to me ... but I don’t know squat about snakes.

And I think she deserves some sort of recognition, for both eco-sympathy and braveness. Maybe we should call her Snake Wrangler from now on or something?

Posted by Drew458     on 06/11/2009 at 11:21 AM   
Filed Under: • Animals • Daily Life • Heroes •  
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