Just Another Snake

The long winter is finally over. And we have gone straight to summer. On May 14. when I gave my talk at the Dent County Historical Society, the temperature outside was around ninety. Yesterday, at Orchard House I spotted flowers in full bloom that should have waited a while to get there.

And today in the pen, snake season officially began. It was really just such a small snake that Bow was not even concerned about it.

I went outside into the back yard to look at the snake from the other direction, and as I came up, Bow was trying to touch it. I asked him not to.

I went to get some tongs and a container to put the snake in, so that I could transport it further away from the house, where neither Bow nor the dogs would bother it. But when I started to move the snake, the dogs wanted to take it away from me, and I had to tell them "no!" several times, before I had the snake tucked safely away in the container.

I took the snake out into the field and released it. It may come back later, but in the meantime it can hunt rodents unmolested by our dogs.

In the Presence of Snakes

"What do you want Bow?" Bow interrupts me many, many times a day. Sometimes it's obvious what he wants, and at other times what he spells out is surprising.

אני רוצה להרוג נחש

"I want to kill a snake."

He didn't say "there's a snake out there." He just said that he wanted to kill a snake, as if this were a perfectly ordinary desire, and that if I were a good mother I would go and find a snake somewhere, so he could kill it. But Leo was barking outside, and it occurred to me that what he really meant was that there was a snake in the back yard. So I went outside to look. But there was no snake.

This was on Tuesday, August 21. I went back inside, telling Bow there was no snake. He examined my legs. It was a hot day, I was wearing bicycle shorts, and I had a thin scratch from where Leo, who is still quite young, though no longer a puppy, had jumped on me. Bow started to groom my scratch, but Leo began barking insistently. We went outside to the outer pen to see what was going on. Leo was barking next to the trampoline at a remnant of roofing on the ground. I went outside again, and Leo led me to the spot, but still there was no snake.

Here is a video where you can see much of this take place:

That was on Tuesday. Yesterday was Wednesday, and Lawrence spent the day with Bow. At the end of the day he reported seeing a black rat snake near the outer pen, almost within reach. Bow had tried to catch it. "I was surprised he wasn't afraid of it," Lawrence mused. "I wonder what he would have done with it if he had got it."

"I think he would have killed it," I said. "He told me yesterday he wanted to kill a snake."

"Yeah," Lawrence agreed. "Probably he would have killed it."

The Rest of the Snake Tale

Yesterday I posted prematurely, before all the facts were in. Normally, I don't do any writing on a Monday, because that is my day to be up and about when Lawrence sits with Bow. I have plenty of time to write and edit all during the week, so it would be a waste to spend the few hours I have away from the pens writing. But when Lawrence related the story of the black rat snake to me, and Bow was happy and content, lying around chewing his cud after lunch, I thought I had a few moments to jot down what had happened before Lawrence came back to relieve me after lunch. I was just re-reading my post one more time for typos, when Lawrence came back.

By this time, Teyman, our little rat terrier mix, was yapping away in the yard, and I suspected that she might have finally noticed the snake. Teyman is a hunter. I have seen her kill squirrels and unearth moles, and she is definitely a snake killer. The rat snake had been left unmolested on the other side of the fence, so it was possible that it had made his way into the yard, and now a fierce battle between dog and snake was raging.

I got ready to leave the pens, as Lawrence was back in charge, and Bow, hearing Teyman all excited in the yard, stirred himself from the corner of the pen where he had been lazing, took Lawrence's hand and spelled: "I want to go outside."

Lawrence decided to take this opportunity to pressure Bow into telling him how he had known about the snake. (Bow had refused to say before, but now he needed Lawrence's help to go outside, so Lawrence was using this leverage to get him to talk.) "Okay, Bow, you can go outside, but first, I want you to tell me how you knew there was a snake."

Bow, anxious to get out and see whether Teyman had caught anything, complied. "I saw," he spelled.

"You saw?" Lawrence asked, sounding kind of dubious. Could Bow see through a solid fence? But since no further explanation was forthcoming, he said: "Okay, Bow, let's go outside then."

Bow and Lawrence made their way to the outer pen, and I went through the garage to the backyard, to see what Teyman was up to. There was much excitement among the dogs, and Teyman did have something in her mouth.

"Did she catch the snake?" I asked.

"She caught a snake," Lawrence replied.

I moved in closer, and Teyman, proud of her kill, dropped it at my feet. But no sooner had she done so than Brownie, our chocolate Lab, picked it up again in his mouth, shaking it a few times for good measure, then throwing it up in the air and inviting me to play fetch with it.

The snake was not a big, black rat snake. It wasn't anything at all like the snake Lawrence had reported seeing on the other side of the fence. It was brown and striped and much smaller. Here is a picture.

The snake Teyman killed

Later in the day, Lawrence asked Bow: "Which snake did you see, Bow? The black snake or the brown?"

Bow answered: "Brown."

Now, we don't necessarily have to take Bow's word on it. He has been known to lie. But it does make sense that he saw a snake in the yard, and not on the side of a solid fence.

In real life, sometimes there is more than one snake. Especially during snake season!