The snake relocation project

So, my husband and I have been walking together this week, and we noticed the black snake that had moved into the perennial bed at the end of the driveway was back in residence. I still have some work to do in that area before winter, and neither of us were comfortable with a snake that close to the house.

For all we know there's a nest of them in the crawl space, but at least we can't see them. Seeing this guy was making both of us, um, nervous.

Yes, I know they're good for mouse control and they're not poisonous and yadda, yadda, yadda. But still. It's a snake. It was my husband's idea to move it, I wouldn't agree to killing it. Not that I've never had a snake killed, but this one wasn't threatening to come in my kitchen.

(If you've ever entertained the idea of living an idyllic life in the country, remember: There are snakes.)

It definitely did not like being moved
from under its rock. Much hissing!

So, back to the project. We first moved the rock under which it was resting, and teased it out onto the driveway with a hoe.

We had a box, and our intent was to somehow get it into the box without having to touch it, then tape the box shut and release it near our pond, about a quarter mile down the road.

Poor snake. More hissing as my husband
pushed it along the road with the hoe.

Good theory, but neither of us wanted to try to fit a three-foot snake into an amazon.com box. We could have gotten a bigger box, but my husband said we could just walk it down the hill. Heh. That's a funny mind picture, and it was a darned funny scene, too.

Finally got it up off the ground for
transporting down the hill.

He did all the work. I trailed along behind giving moral support. I. Don't. Like. Snakes. Neither does he, but relocating snakes is clearly a boy job. Don't go all feminist on me and say otherwise. I'm quite sure snake-handling is on the boy side of the chore ledger.

Done! I hope it doesn't have a homing
instinct for my perennial bed.

My husband started out by kind of pushing it along the side of the road with the hoe blade, but eventually was able to pick it up and carry it on the end of the hoe. We deposited it along the side of the road near the entrance to our pond, and hope it finds some nice friends there to hang with for the winter.

I'm sure the Amish men building a fence across the road laughed their you-know-whats off after we left. They probably pull snakes out of chicken coops every day of the week. Heck, their six-year-old children probably do, and don't think a thing about it. We planned this project as if it were a military maneuver. Heh. And, temporarily anyway, we've won the battle.

What does any of this have to do with knitting, running, reaping or eating? Not a darned thing. Here's a couple things that could be filed under the reaping category.

• I made pico de gallo yesterday to go with chips made from baked soft flour tortillas. The only store-bought ingredients were a little olive oil and the onion. Everything else – tomatoes, sweet peppers, jalapeno, cilantro, lime – was homegrown. I could probably have pulled some onions from the garden, but I want them to get bigger before winter.

• I just went out to see what Hershey was barking at. I was in the garden yesterday for an hour, pulling cornstalks and tomato plants and if a row of onions I planted weeks ago had started sprouting, I would have noticed it. This morning, the whole row of sets, which I've assumed were never going to grow, has pushed above ground. I'm astonished.

That's all. Enjoy your day.