Snakes on a Plain!

Okay, maybe plain is a bit of a stretch since its mostly mountains around here, but you get the idea. This is Sam. She is one of many snakes currently inhabiting our backyard. She was first spotted two weeks ago by a neighbor boy who ran up to me shouting that he saw a snake. "Or maybe it was just a skin, it looked gray." I, in all of my infinite wisdom had already decided that the kid had had too many pop rocks and was delusional because clearly it was too early for snakes.

That's when I met Sam. Sam indeed had a grayish cast, but not like she was supposed to be gray, more like she had just slithered out of a long, dusty tunnel. Sam is an eastern garter snake which according this means she and her kind are generally the last ones to hit the hay and the first ones to awaken if they decide to sleep at all. Huh. They like wet areas. Check. Bunches of them tend to hibernate together in dens which explains the four we saw a few days later. They come in two colorways, dark green and brown. We have both. Apparently they grow pretty fast, because I know that this is Sam and she seems much bigger than she was two weeks ago. Oh, and I originally named Sam "Big Daddy" because I thought that she was a male and all the little ones were either female or babies. Nope. The females are the big ones.

So, that's what I've been up to...snake chasing. What's going on in your neck of the woods?