Welcome to Legal Tender Farm

Welcome to Legal Tender Farm

Thursday, July 05, 2012

**Shudder**

Garden gate latch.


Right under the gate latch.

Lends new meaning to the saying, "If it were a snake, it would have bit me."


I didn't see this critter until I had already opened the gate, walked through, then turned to close it.


It stayed curled up in there until I poked it a few times.


Then it slithered magically across the board.


I didn't know what kind it was, but went inside and looked it up.  It is a Texas rat snake (also often called a chicken snake) and not poisonous.  They eat small rodents, which is good, but they also get into the chicken coop and eat the eggs, which is not good.  This one will live another day, but if it decides to go to the coop, that's where it's luck will run out.

3 comments:

calico said...

Wow! How scary! Glad it was just a rat snake, and I hope it stays away from your chickens.

Meagan Claire said...

We have two families at church with chickens and they talk about choppin snake heads all the time!

Mosaics said...

This snake was in the garden this morning hiding amongst the pumpkin leaves. Freaked me out when I realized it was there, not a foot from my hand as I searched for squash bugs. I had on a garden glove, so I grabbed it's tail as it slithered away. It was very strong.