The Black Vault

Yesterday while clearing the last of the wood from the Ash tree I fell, I stumbled onto a beautiful 4' long Rat snake. This is a sign that Spring/Summer might well be here to stay although the guy did have a very cool night to slither through today it's supposed to be near 75 degrees and 80 tomorrow ~~about damn time, what a whacky Spring it has been thus far.

So far not one cloud in the sky and a light breeze, just an absolutely beautiful day ahead, and they are saying all through the week-end as well. Awesome.

I was going to capture the snake and save it for my 5 year old, she loves snakes and bugs with the exception of Spiders. She's scared of them mainly because her Mother is batshit stone cold scared to death of bugs, any bugs, but she handles snakes with zero fear.

Oh well I hope the guy doesn't fall victim to the Redtails but such is life in the wild, even here in the Great Hoosier state. I'm just lucky to be able to experience things that give joy and knowledge to my kids/family. My two daughters are more like little boys, fearless about most things and not scared to get their hands dirty. They actually love it. Chips off the old block I suppose.

Soon the Kings and Racers will be out as well, or at least I hope I can find the one that's been living in the back yard for a few years now.( Racer ) She's damn near 6' long and eats mice. moles, and the occasional careless toad or frog.

Kings are good to keep around, they kill and eat Copperheads and as much as we're outdoors that's a good thing. I just wish they ate Ticks too!

Cole

Yeah ticks suck.

So do mosquito's.

Springtime makes the rattlesnakes come out in California. I'm not sure if we have rat snakes or not, at least in my part of the state. We have California King snakes which look like coral snakes but the bands are slightly different. Our only venonous snakes are the rattlers. You would think I seen tons of them with all the camping and desert riding I used to do when I was young, but I've actually only seen a few. I think about all the times I;ve slept on the ground in the desert or backpacking and am surprized they never crawled near me. Probably did and I never knew it.

The King snake:



Cole

That's a mean looking bugger. We used to have a python, it was pretty cool. Watching it get the mice was interesting, infinite patience. It would simply sprawl out and gradually fill itself out to occupy the entire cage instead of just going for it. Once the mouse had nowhere to run anymore it'd just casually open up it's mouth and eat it. Watching it squirm inside the snake was kinda weird though.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3845750/

Big enough? I think so.

Big bastard!

Once while hunting mushrooms I was on my hands and knees picking a nice patch of large Morels. I saw some a distance from me on the other side of a fallen log. As I eased over the long on all fours I spied one of these coiled and ready to strike.



I did a double back flip and hit the ground running. I covered a few hundred feet in 2-3 seconds. I was probably 12-13 years old then. I was proud of myself for not pissing my pants.

Timber rattlers are nothing to play with. A bite probably isn't fatal unless you're allergic but it'll make you sick as hell! Hurt's like hell too!

Cole

Never been bit by a snake.

I imagine it sucks, specially venomous ones.

I have been bit by lots of spiders though. We have this big ass wolf spiders who live in our basement/crawl space, and there are a lot of them.

I hate spiders. In the winter they like to sneak upstairs at night (most at night anyway) and when they do they like to find warm places to hang out, usually that means the living room, but it has happened a couple of times that they'll find their way into my room and get under the covers and sleep on me, of course that doesn't last long because I roll over. So then I awake to a pain in the leg and it takes a second... Then I can feel a big ass spider going berzerk trying to get free. Which of course is the most horribly frightening thing to wake up too, and it makes it hard to get back to sleep..

*shivers* nightmares..

http://swreptile.com/Calphoto.html


Pictures of many kinds of kingsnakes. Check out the ones at the bottom of the page, those look like coral snakes. I've seen some of the red banded ones in Sequoia and Kings Cyn. National Parks.

I wish there were snakes near my place...
Such lovely creatures.
I only see ducks and pidgeons...
Those ducks...are really intelligent these days...