Common Garter Snake
We have so many cats around this place. At least six that I have seen, three that come around regularly. One comes and sits at the back door and begs for food. She will come in, but hates setting foot on the carpet. I was almost tempted to adopt her, I am pretty sure she's pregnant, and she was so dirty I thought she must be a stray. Last night she came over sparkly clean and smelling of shampoo and got no food from me. Poor thing. Another cat sits sentry duty on the compost heap. He can be seduced to the back door with a spoonful of tuna, but won't let me come near him otherwise. Today my Love alerted me to the fact that this cat was trotting across the lawn with a snake in his mouth. Of course I grabbed my camera and walked carefully towards him, he dropped the snake on the lawn and took off.
The snake was pretty quiet at first. Traumatized. So I had a bit of time to work on getting shots. This is one of the last ones. He's starting to get alert, warmed up in the sun, and he's ready to get away from this big black shiny thing sticking right in his face. He started flicking his tongue rapidly, but unfortunately just as I was changing my camera settings for rapid shooting to try and catch it, he suddenly darted away from me and into the forsythia.
Isn't he gorgeous??? :D
Comments
well .. you did get a good shot of him *(snake)
Those poor cats.. you might want to call your local animal shelter and see if they do a neuter program with feral cats.. they do it here and it is free. I think they will even pay you a stipend if you catch them and bring them in.. Not sure how well it pays or if it does in all areas.. I just hate them to keep having babies and nobody to feed them all!!! course they can munch on snake.. me thinks..
there was a woman here in town who's home burnt down.. The fire dept rescued her and a few cats. but the woman had over 50 cats.. She said, she never intended to have any.. but they just kept on multiplying.. Oh my gosh.. Hello!!!
anyway.. yeah.. I feel for the poor critters .. always having babies.. Who would want that??
Speaking of pets.. My daughter canNOT find a place to rent due to her PitBull doggie.. The apt/duplex/townhouse owners have this thing about Pits.. it is really a shame.. they are such smart dogs.. and Niki is well behaved..
Life goes on..
hope you love your job.. 6 days a week seems a bit much to me too..
we have snow today.. on may 1st.. so no planting tomatoes for us yet..
I definitely have the aim of cutting back to two days a week in June. I figure I will just take a month or so for all of us to get to know each other first. Doing the six days over two different jobs will help. So will the fact that the second job is only half days, and starts early, so on Wednesday through Friday I will be home and finished just after midday. Also with that job, I can do just about anything my client is happy to do. She's expressed a keen interest in gardening, for example, so as long as I keep it interesting I can bring her home to my garden (and get paid gas mileage to do so), take her swimming (she wants to learn to swim) or spend the morning teaching her to read a little more than the basic level that she already does.
We had frost here last night too. But I have withes set up over the garden and the last few nights I have spread blankets over all the plants to protect them. That seems to have done well. The last frost point here is May 15, so I might have to do that for a few nights still over the next couple of weeks.
It's such a shame about your daughter and her dog. Sigh. In Colorado they have a points system assigned to reported dog attacks, and when you weigh that out as a percentage of the dog population, there were far more problems with attacks by labs than by pit bulls in 2006. People just get these ideas and run with them.
Even though I knew he was harmless, I still felt a bit weird reaching around to manually focus for a few of the shots. My poor old camera is definitely on its way out. Sigh.
I'm glad you liked it anyhow! :D
I know, aren't they gorgeous! This little guy was slightly injured and I considered taking him indoors and trying to keep him and take him to a vet and make sure he's ok, but being new to the area it just seemed like such a stress to do - for both me and the snake. Anyhow, he warmed up and took off just as I thought all of this, so it was a moot point.