Backyard Erotica
(Critters • )
Some people put up with those horn dogs, the kind that insist on humping human legs and generally making a disgusting nuisance out of themselves, usually because their owners are too timid to make their own charges knock it off and go lay down.
Our dog may occasionally stick his nose (literally) into other people’s business, but he’s certainly no leg humper.
The insects around here are another matter entirely. Apparently giddy over the long stretches of humid heat through which we humans suffer, our local bug brethren are a peculiarly boisterous and ballsy lot.
These Agraulis vanillae, for instance (Gulf Fritillary to you and me). Stand around motionless in the back driveway for longer than, say, 14 seconds, and you can damn well figure your pants are about to become a butterfly bordello.
Firesign Theatre says no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, and I say no one expects Fritillaries to make the nasty on their jeans, either. Yet, like chaos, both events occupy multiple intersections in the space/time continuum.
I have no conclusive ending for this post, thus a period will have to suffice.
→ B.Dunn, Nov 02, 2009, 02 59 pm
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Walking on the Water
(River • Critters)
One of the nastiest side effects of a minor river flooding has to do with the fact that you can’t drown fire ants (more’s the pity). When the Brazos rose up and began seeping into fire ant nests near shore, these robotic little pain delivery systems grabbed up their queen, swarmed to the surface and joined together to form a floating gob of protection.
The streak of dark dirt poured over the lighter brown water is in actuality about a million fire ants, linked together like miniature Leggos, somehow swimming as one across heavy currents until they reached shore.
Once there, they began a full-out ant sprint toward some geographic goal of which each one somehow was aware.
And whoa be unto my young children, each of whom tarried too long in crocks, wondering at this marvel of insect engineering until the front-runner insects breached the crock ventilation openings and attacked unsuspecting toes with relentless ferocity.
We have always been at war with the fire ants. If not for them, I really would be an organic farmer. But I reserve the right to chemical weapons, just for these little bastards.
→ B.Dunn, Nov 01, 2009, 08 44 am
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Just Takin' It Easy Today
(Work • Critters)
→ B.Dunn, Sep 07, 2009, 07 38 am
Snake Rescue - The Series
(Critters • )
My Internet went down late yesterday morning for the second time in two days (hey, that’s Comcastic!) so I opted for more physical labor and mowed the back yard, since the grass was getting out of control.
The blackberries have long since stopped producing, but the bird netting was still up, hanging on the ground where it could foul the mower blades, so I pulled it off of the plants, cutting myself a couple of times on a few thorny canes that insisted on clinging to the net, which was why I’d procrastinated.
The netting is expensive and hard to find, so I balled it up around the canes as best I could, and opened the shed door to toss it on top of a couple other balls of net.
Big snake right inside the door served as a reminder of why it’s good to look where you’re going before you actually get there. It was a Texas Rat Snake, and it had managed to twist itself up terribly in a chunk of bird netting. In attempting to free itself, it had twisted its body so many times that the netting had become woven, like a little rope, and served as a tourniquet. The snake had probably been stuck there for a few days, as its body was swollen on the head side of the net knot.
Both the snake and net were twisted around a metal flower pot holder. And so was a second piece of netting, one that also had held a snake. But all that remained was a snake skeleton, serving as testament that I don’t go into the old shed very often.
I had to drag the whole mess out into the light where I could see what I was doing, and the live snake didn’t like it. He was probably 3.5 feet, big enough to take a bite out of me if he’d wanted, but nothing like his older uncle shown above, a 6-footer we treed a few months ago.
The stuck snake was weakened from being trapped so long, but still strong enough to put up a fight, which he did at first. I was able to cut away the netting with the skeleton in it, threw it away in a trash can by the garage and came back with scissors, some big pruning shears, a glove and the nearest thing to a snake stick I could find. I was in a hurry because I’d just let Bosco out to run the river, and if he came back there would be trouble.
The shears were useless because they weren’t sharp enough to cut the netting. They were scaring the snake, which was raising up has much as he could – about a foot, and he was displaying the inside of his mouth for me. A young rat snake that size has some teeth – not really impressive, but they’re slanted toward his throat. Which means if he bites you good, you’re going to have a hard time prying his mouth off of your arm.
I put on a glove and held the scissors in my right hand while using the stick or part of the flower pot holder to keep the snake’s head under something approaching control. I had to dig into his skin a little in order to cut away pieces of the twisted net – not fun as he kept working to get his head free.
But after I cut away a few key strands and freed part of his body, the snake relaxed a little. He stopped fighting. By the end, I wasn’t even holding his head down, just blocking its direct path to my cutting hand. I tried to get every strand of netting, but it was hard to tell because of the swelling in part of his body. He was sluggish after being freed, but I didn’t have time to examine him because Bosco sniffed back into the yard and tried to go after him. I was able to keep the dog away long enough to balance the snake on a stick and lift him over the fence to freedom. He moved into some high grass.
I hope he was able to recover, because I really like this particular snake species. First off, just as their name implies they enjoy eating rats. Unlike R. Brady’s marauding monkeys, rats are the worst critters we face here. The enemy of my enemy the rat is my friend. Especially when it is as confident and calm as the Texas Rat Snake. Intelligent even, for a serpent. I bet you could domesticate one of these snakes if you didn’t have a dog snorking around trying to eat it.
Not like the water snakes. I’ve caught several of them in my garden nets over the years, and had to kill about half of them because they are so aggressive and wild.
I’d love to find a better solution than this crappy bird netting (deer netting, really, according to the label, although good luck stopping a deer with it). But no netting means almost no fruit or tomato harvest around here, because our birds are bad-ass.
→ B.Dunn, Aug 28, 2009, 05 51 am
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