A Welcome Visitor

 This is a wonderful and sad occurance. First, the wonderful part. Blue Racers are one of my favorite snakes. They are gorgeous, but they are in trouble throughout most of their range. I suspect this is female because of the abrupt transition from fat body to narrow tail. It's also pretty good size- maybe 5 feet long.

They tend to be more nervous than garter snakes or some of the others, and you often get bitten (no big deal- they have no venom) if you try to pick one up. However, this one didn't even try for me. Isn't she good looking?

Now for the sad part. I inadvertently tried to kill her. I was taking a look at my flower beds, and saw this.

She had tried to crawl through my fencing, and had gotten tangled, winding through three separate holes. Since she is good sized, she'd gotten stuck. I quickly went and got some scissors to clip the nylon fencing. I should have started with the space nearest her tail, but I didn't think about it, and freed the hole closest to her head. She immediately tried to get away by looping right back throgh another hole! NO... So I quickly and gently grabbed her neck (we used to have pet snakes, so I have no trouble knowing how to handle them) and pulled her back through that hole, being careful not to catch her scales against the nylon.

So then I had to hold her with one hand and snip the rest of the mesh the other two places she was caught. Then I took her to the porch and sat down (first picture above) so I could look her over and make sure she hadn't gotten really injured. Snakes can't heal until they shed their skins, so any cut is likely to lead to infection. But except for roughing herself up a bit, she seemed OK.

I talked to her for a while then let her go under the pines. Later, she had moved on, so I think she's going to be fine.

But why was she trying to get in the flower bed? I saw a chipmunk in there yesterday, and found this today, right near where the snake was. The chipmunk can get through the fence at the end where the stake meets the house wall.

Racers are constrictors. They will grab and squeeze small mammals to death before eating them. She was probably looking for breakfast.

Ugh... how am I going to keep this from happening again? I'll need to keep that chippy out or kill it, otherwise, it's like purposely setting a trap for the snake. I like chipmunks too, but one of them is much more expendable than a mature blue racer.

Meanwhile, I've also got bees in one of my kitchen walls. Trying to figure out what to do about that!

I edited, but not as much today. Had to do errands and shopping.

See A Visit from Mr. Blue