Sunday, June 30, 2013

snake!


This is probably not a story with a good ending.  I was staring glumly into the depths of my current, intransigent chapter in the middle of this afternoon, when Alice came in a state of some agitation to say that our birds' nest, on the front door, was being attacked by a large red snake.  Once I'd realized that the snake wasn't actually in the house ... well, what does one do?  In Eldorado, one calls Neighborhood Watch, who then despatch a snake wrangler ... So I went outside, and waited- with camera, and binoculars - and to my horror, the snake was coiled up in, or rather round, the nest, and was being dive-bombed by about fourteen finches.  Snake feigned nonchalance. 

Wrangler turned up, deemed it to be a Red Runner - and run it certainly did, lashing its tongue around, but he trapped it very efficiently in a plastic bucket, and took it off to be released somewhere - when I asked, he said quite possibly his back yard, which is probably as full of the things as Medusa's head, by now.  So I looked in trepidation inside the nest.  Originally, there were three eggs, but I don't know how many hatched/survived.  There was one chick still there, and still breathing - but I have seen very little evidence of finch parents coming and going during the rest of today - though they have certainly been very much in the vicinity - so I'll look, but with a sad heart, I suspect, when I go and take the trash down the driveway in the morning. 

Curiously, I don't see any baby bird sized bulges in the snake - could it have just been treating the nest as a larder, for later today?  It was a decidedly disruptive incident.


No comments:

Post a Comment