Saturday, June 13, 2009

Intrusions at the Hacienda

The last couple of days have been interesting in terms of the local wildlife. Day before yesterday I heard Susannah yelling in the living room and rushed to see what had happened. She had opened the door to go out, and for some reason a humming bird had flown in and headed for the window to go back out again. Unfortunately for the hummer the window was closed and before Susannah could do anything Amber, the cat, was up on the window sill, the bird was batted to the floor and the prcess of digestion started. I arrived in time to see the tail vanish. Amber was evicted since we figured the feathers were going to quickly come back up.

I hate to lose a hummer, although the truth is we have more than enough to feed two cats. Right now the population is high enough to go through about a half gallon of sugar water a day, and the consumption is increasing as the word gets out that high quality food is available at Mike and Susannah's place. Fascinating, two feeders, 8 spots to feed from total, and both birds are fighting for the same spot! While fascinating to watch, and really beautiful, they have no manners or social graces at all.

Right now we have green birds with black heads and red throats, but any time now the rufus birds will arrive in great numbers. They look like burnished pennies, bright copper with a red throat that seems to glow like a burning coal. Nope, manners are just as bad as their cousins, they are just prettier.

Then yesterday, as I struggled to wake up over my first cup of coffee while staring blearily at the computer screen in the study there was a a scream of "Michal, there's a snake in the door!" Now I admit, I wasn't quite fully awake, and I was trying to picture how a snake could be in the door. Perhaps embedded in the wood? Anyway I rushed to the living room, and from under the front door about a foot and a half of bull snake (also known as a gopher snake) tail twisted and turned. Opening the door, hoping not to hurt it, drug it inside where it tried to make an escape. No luck! We have laminated flooring, and apparently the stuff is just too slick for a snake to make progress, so mostly it just wiggled from side to side having no success in making progress.

I guess I should have grabbed my camera and gotten some pictures since it was pretty young, only about 2.5 feet long, and its skin was bright and shinny. I suspect if we really looked around we could find the skin that it had probably just shed. Oh well, forgot about that as I put on a pair of gloved and finally managed to pick it up despite the fact that it was moving as fast as it could, but not going anywhere. I don't mind handling non-poisonous snakes but do take the precaution of wearing gloves just in case they get too frightened and try biting when first picked up. Generally they settle down in just a minute or two and after that are safe to handle.

No problem with this one, it had a one track mind and that was to go someplace else. So we carried it out into the woods where I hope it can escape both cats and dogs. And as we walked along it found it could move in my gloved hands and so headed out, from one hand to another as fast as it could go, probably about as fast as I was walking had it been on the ground. When we reached the woods near my work shop I let it go onto the ground and it kept on going as fast as it could into the trees and grass, hopefully to grow a bit and keep the mouse population down a bit. Most likely it will also have an effect on the grasshoppers, the lizards, and best of all, on other snakes. Rattle snakes have not been seen around our property, but they are most certainly in our area, so the production of bull snakes is highly encouraged.

As I watched out the window this morning while exercising, the dog and the phoebes were competing to see who could catch and eat the most bugs. At least I guess that was what they were eating. Chaco just gobbles them up, the phoebe would catch one, go bang it on a rock and then either eat it or take it up to the nest. Haven't poked my head up to see if it was feeding its mate or newly hatched chicks. Since I generally see only one at a time out, I suspect that they are still next sitting. They present quite a drama as they swoop and then hoover, standing still in the air, then dropping to grab a bug. Or sometimes swooping down to catch one out of the air. Between them and the humming birds I sometimes wonder if it is safe to walk out onto the pourch. I can picture one of them stuck in me like a arrow in a tree.

I wonder what I next adventure with the local wildlife will be.

Hugs,

Mike L

10 comments:

  1. Life sounds exciting there.

    Once my cat Grendel brought a live bird inside. It got away from her and I was able to catch it and put it outside where it flew away. She found a snake once too but didn't bring it in, just jumped up and down on it until I took her inside. Things got more mundane when she became an indoor only cat.

    I really like hearing about your resident creatures :)

    - Crystal

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  2. Glad you are enjoying my stories, Crystal. We have had other cats bring home small snakes too and it can get a bit exciting.

    I have seen Amber go from being flat on the ground to four feet in the air to catch a humming bird, quite a display. Most of the time we have been able to get them away from her, but this time she must have been hungry. Normally she is a mouser, normally we find the remains of one each morning when we have let her out. Oliver is generally the birder, but maybe that figures since we don't let him aout at night. Amber turns into a real grouch if we try to keep her in making everyone's life miserable, even the dogs :).

    Hugs,

    Mike

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  3. I found the part about the snake especially interesting because I saw a small snake in my yard last summer. I have also heard a lot of people around here say they have seen snakes in their yards also. Now I'm wondering what to do if I should find one in my shed or in some other unwanted place. Maybe, if I just put on my leather gloves I could safely remove a non poisonous one? I wonder where I would put it. Perhaps over the fence into a neighbor's yard? Maybe if it got scared in my yard it wouldn't come back? The only poisonous snakes we have here in Northern Virginia are copperheads. Even the juveniles have some copper color on their heads, according to Animal Control. Thus, I could be sure it wasn't poisonous. I think that Animal Control would help with a copperhead, but not with any other kind.
    Keep striving,
    Mary Sue

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  4. Gee, I remember a certain school teacher that confiscated a snake from her student and he wasn't certain he would get it back at the end of the day :). Yeah, I would suggest the gloves, and kind of scoop it up by the head. In your case I would be tempted to take it down to the creek, which is where a lot of them probably come from. Northern VA also has a few rattlesnakes, but they are hard to find. Interestingly, the small copper heads are probably more dangerous than the older larger ones. The older ones are more likely to NOT inject venom, at least on the first strike, while the younger ones are less wise to the world and more likely to inject. Turns out the same is true of rattlers out here. Someone recently comment that it their cow was bitten on the nose, they hoped it was by an older snake instead of a nervous youngster.

    Mike L

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  5. Another great essay.You never should have 'crapped' around with physics. Hate to be cruel, but you wasted a lot of good years trying to trace things you coudn't see! Jack

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  6. A snake story. Although we live in rattlesnake country I haven’t seen any in a while. I think they don’t like the horses running around. But last spring my wife, who is truly pathologically afraid of snakes (any leg challenged object longer than wide), runs in to the house screaming that there is a rattlesnake in the grass next to the horse shed. I dutifully grab my trusty but never used rattlesnake dispatcher (shovel) and creep toward the grass where she is pointing. To my surprise it wasn’t a stick, piece of rope, or hapless toad. In fact, in the shadow of the grass, it looked pretty snaky and was hissing in a very threatening way. Just as I was thinking I might have to deploy my shovel, the snake turned sideways and in profile revealed itself to be the head and neck of a very agitated momma turkey, sitting on a fine clutch of eggs. Even after our dog made off with a couple at least nine hatched, grew up, and one by one flew (yes they do) off into the tress around our house. Richard

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  7. Great story, Richard. Glade you didn't dispatch the "snake" before you know what it was!

    We did have a hen turkey show up on our property after one of the forest fires nearby. Stayed with us for almost a year and became very attached to a guest that was staying in our RV. It was a riot to watch the turkey chase her when she left in her truck, and again when she returned. Unfortunately, she vanished just before last Thanksgiving, and we haven't questioned any of our neighbors to closely. I don't think our cats were to unhappy to see her go, she periodically ran them up a tree.

    Mike L

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  8. Oddly the turkeys around here disappear just before Thanksgiving too. However, most seem to return again in the spring. Over the years we've come to recogngnize quit a few. Richard

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  9. In other words, we don't suspect fowl play. (sorry, really sorry)

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  10. We had hoped she was just in hiding, but she never returned. We kind of hope that maybe she found a tom someplace and eloped.

    Hey, I kind of like puns, makes life less fowl :)

    Mike L

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