A Little Bit About A Snake

Rancho de Pollo

Brain, are you shocked by the amount of blogging I am doing?  I told you things were going to change!  Above is a pic of our little rancherito so I can remember how it looked this summer.  We are just barely beginning to make some progress towards what I envision for my back yard.

Dawn is not amused.

Can you find the chicken in this picture?

Dawn is the only one among my chickens who; A: has any sense of adventure, and B: is not too fat to fly over the gate to her pen.  She spends her days roaming the greater country of our back yard.  So far she shows the good sense not to go over the fences into either one of the neighbor's yards.  The day she does that will be her last I fear, since the neighbors both have big, hungry, chicken eating dogs.  So far though, she seems to be content with just having a larger kingdom than the rest of the chickens and being the only one with unrestricted access to the compost pile.  I am OK with Dawn's explorations, I relate to pig headed independence after all, especially because it gives me the chance to see her freak out and run at top chicken-speed all the way from the back fence to my door whenever I come out with a bowl of treats.  This is much funnier than it sounds (at least I find chickens in a hurry to be hysterical) I will have to get some video since I can't do it justice with words.  The only slight issue with Dawn's wandering is that she has taken to nesting in my potted plants, alas.  

I had a bunch of extra sticks laying around, and no where to grow my potatoes.  This is an experiment.

Its raining!  Brain, I never liked rainy days until I moved to Texas.  Now even though i still find rainy days depressing I don't dare complain since the state needs every last drop it can get, and my garden looks so much happier after a good soaking.

Little cutie pie.

So the snake story is this.  I want it documented officially Brain.  I have a seventh sense, snake sense.  I swear I do.  This will be one example of how I always know before hand when I am going to find a snake.  Sometimes I dream about it a couple days before or sometimes just the night before.

 About 4 days ago I was reading a discussion post on my chicken meet up group's website about snakes and chickens and I thought to myself, "I wish we had a snake living here!"  I sent a mental invitation out and invited any snakes looking for a home.  Then two days later the hens started acting funny.  They'd go into their favorite fort of sticks to lay and then, in just a bit, they'd come out again all aflutter and cackling up a storm.  "Its our snake isn't it?"  I said to them.  "Don't worry, it will be a nice snake, I only invited nice ones."  Today B went outside and found the cat staring intently down into what passes us for a lawn.  Sure enough there was a little Checkered Garter Snake fearing for his life, but luckily, still whole and in one (long, slithery) piece.  As far as snakes go, you don't get much nicer and more harmless than this.  He's probably eating crickets and grasshoppers and earwigs in the compost.  I rescued him from Five's steely regard and put him under the shed where I hope he will live happily ever after.  And that's my snake story for today.

Courage practices with his pack on St. Edward's Trail.

We had a great hike on Sunday with my hiking meet up group.  The dogs practiced with their packs.  More practice since I can't seem to take the plunge and get us out for this over night trip I keep wanting to do.