Snakes in our yard, mostly

If you bring in a dozen dump truckloads of boulders to build a waterfall you'd better be prepared to appreciate snakes in your yard, right? The rattler hiding under the chair was a bit startling--it did not seem possible that anything besides a cricket should fit under there.

We have seen Gopher snakes courting and probably mating twice now. I have no idea how long snakes live, but every time I see one of the Gopher snakes, I hope it is the one that we got from Home Depot. We rented a ditch digger to put in some of the irrigation pipe. After we got the machine out of the truck a pencil sized baby Gopher snake crawled out of it. We encouraged it to go over the bank.

The other snake we see most often is the Yellow-bellied Racer. It likes to hang out by the back porch too. It often startles me by moving under the big thyme plant. Sometimes it likes the stone stairs down the side of the house. Once, one was weaving in and out through the tiny cracks in the concrete blocks, which did not seem possible either.

Adding a Garter snake to the collection. It was along the edge of the Columbia River at Confluence State Park (at the confluence of the Wenatchee and Columbia rivers. I've spotted these snakes sunning at the margin where the grass starts above the cobbles they use along the shore to help hold the edge of the bank. They quickly slip into the rocks and away if one gets too close.

Adding the garter snake, from Kalaloch, to this journal entry so I can find it more easily.

Posted on June 18, 2018 07:08 AM by wenatcheeb