Le temps passe vite, el tiempo vuela, il tempo vola, or good old tempus fugit; however you write it, it goes past far too fast. Tomorrow, in the northern hemisphere is Lughnasadh, an ancient harvest festival celebration. Harvest! It barely feels like spring has finished as the weather has been so strange this year.
In the garden this year it’s the weeds that have definitely come out on top. The rains made the soil un-walkable on, and then the sudden switch to 35C baked the surface to rock and reduces me to a wilted being, while all the time the weeds revelled and grew. So guess what I will be doing for the next month!
I thought we’d got through the spring without my youngest cat, Jewel, bringing me home any of her snake friends but I spotted her outside throwing this one around.
I’d purchased one of those long handled grabbers/litter pickers earlier in the year solely for the purpose of picking up any of the snakes she brought back. They usually feign death so I placed it on a log and went inside to grab a camera. I thought it would have crawled away while I was getting the camera but to my surprise it was still there when I returned. It carried on just lying where I’d put it and I began to think that it had really died through Jewel throwing it up into the air repeatedly.
I carefully picked it up again and took it to the house where I was going to put into a small vivarium I have. There it would be away from Jewel who was desperately trying to play with her ‘friend’ and if it was dead I’d decided to pickle it in alcohol. No, not to flavour drink, but to preserve it!
Well I got as far as the kitchen where the change of lighting from bright sun outside to shadow inside meant I didn’t realise I’d dropped it. Hitting the cold tiles was the cue for it to make an escape bid. Thankfully my eyes adapted fast enough that I caught it again and was able to let it go here Jewel didn’t see it.
As with the previous snakes, April 2011 and May 2011, this was a juvenile western whip snake but quite a bit longer, around 45 cms/ 18 ins.
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