Many people have a thing about snakes. Yikes! They almost bolt from the room when the topic is even broached.
I’m not so sure the late Crocodile Hunter did them a service: yanking them out of holes and rolling around on the ground with the poor minding-their-own-business kind of creatures. It was dramatic and theatrical but not to the reptiles best interest. Most snakes are shy and retiring, avoiding us as though we have the plague. To them, perhaps we do. Finding a snake in the wild is more of an exception than a rule. They know how and why they should hide, since we have the propensity to chop them to pieces with our garden hoes.
Snakes are marvelous designs of simplicity, perfectly suited to go down into rodent holes to ferret out food. If you have no mice around your home, they will not stay. If you do, they'll stay long enough to eliminate the pests and then they'll move on. Quietly. No fuss.
The one snake I have had the longest personal relationship with is a corn snake we have on display at nature center. She has a remarkably gentle disposition, docile even, an excellent companion, easy to care for and always ready to go on a ride.
She also recently shed her old skin and is looking very colorful just in time for October.
She’s a beauty. Don't you think?
- Photo by my friend, the late Jim Logan.
•
