More Livestock for our Home

Ever since we had the Mouse/Ant Infestation of 2011 and the resulting Great Garage Purge of 2011, I have been placing and checking and replacing glue boards that Professional Pest Control left to capture above named creatures in our garage.  And oh, have we caught crickets galore in those puppies.  No ants whatsoever.  And one mouse.  Alive - remember? 

We've been having what I can only assume is serious dead mouse stink in the house and garage, and I cannot for the life of me find the little stinker.  Ha - no pun intended!!

Well, as I was cleaning out the van today and putting antsy (ha ha!  I'm soo punny tonight!) little boys to work sweeping the driveway, it occurred to me that it might be timely to sweep out the garage and check the glueboards.

Which is when I discovered this:

Why yes, yes, you did see that correctly.  An adolescent black rat snake decided it was a great idea to make a visit inside my garage!  Sad news for him, temptation is a kicker and those yummo crickets were already dead inside the box that would soon entrap him.

And as you can see, this made him none too happy:

Now, to be perfectly honest, I just cannot kill a live animal unless it's going to be harmful to my family.  And while I do NOT want a snake in my garage, this was a little one.  Maybe one that was just about to start third grade just like my Matthew!  So, yes, once again, it was up to me to save the day.  Such a difficult life I lead.

I noticed right away that he was caught at both his head and mid-section.  This his body was "free" around the bottom of the box, and then the tip of his tail was caught.  See? It was pretty easy to give the tail a gentle tug and get that part free, but oh, did that mid-section give me a problem.  I've heard that to free animals from these traps, you can pour some cooking oil on the animal, and that helps loosen him to wriggle his way free.  Because we all know how I need more snakes in my backyard.

But Animal Sap that I am, that is exactly what I did.  He wriggled around a bit, and I tried to help pull him loose a bit (which, I'm sorry, he is not as ferocious as he'd like to think when he's just this little snake caught on a glueboard beside DEAD BUGS), which, unfortunately, pulled some of his skin off.  And perhaps this will have been a fatal mistake of mine??  I don't know.  What I do know is that he eventually wriggled his oily little self out of the box and slithered off into the woods.

So, if you're needing a little fried snake, I've got one all oiled up for you!