So last week, we encountered a couple of snakes in a couple of different habitats.
When we went to Dogwood Canyon, we saw this snake sunning itself on one of the stone bridges. Not on the part we walked on, fortunately.
To me, it looks like a rat snake of some sort, but I’m not sure. To be honest, the snake flashcards I created don’t really nail a snake if it’s in a different position. I know that lined snakes are okay, but the venomous snakes around here have diamond patterns or jagged ring things. So we gave this guy plenty of room.
When we got home on Wednesday, we found this:
That’s easy to identify; that’s a prairie ring-necked snake. Bigger than the one we saw in April. And dead, so the cats got it. We did have someone tending to the cats, but it’s good to know they could hunt up something to eat in the family room if they needed to.
Although maybe “easy to identify” might be a misnomer; I had the boys look through the snake flashcards, and the oldest came up with Northern Red-Bellied Snake. So maybe the flashcards are pretty worthless.
Maybe I should have made up an acronym like Snake Out, Snake In (SOSI) to riff on like , but that seems like work.
