Name That Snake
(Critters • )
Two of my boys ran across this serpent between the back garden and the river, and then we tried to keep him from escaping into the brush until someone arrived with a camera.
The snake made a stand at a fair-sized sycamore, studied the odds for a few seconds and then decided to go straight up the tree. There are no limbs for at least 8 feet going up the trunk, but that proved to be no impediment at all for this snake. He had great muscle control, and hoisted himself up about 15 feet, then stretched out on a branch to see what crazy thing we would do next.
Snapped a couple of pictures was all.
It was a Texas Rat Snake – more colorful than I’d seen before (and brighter coloration than he looks up in the tree in the photo), with some orange in the blotching along his body. But he was between 5 and 6 feet long, and I don’t know of any other snake around here that reaches that length.
Like their name implies, they patrol for rats, and that’s good enough for me. Plus we’re training him to drop down on dirt bikers when they cut through the yard.
→ B.Dunn, Apr 27, 2009, 04 56 am
