[Magdalen] Taking care of our neighbors in the yard

[Jay Weigel]

We have, or had (now that it's spring I'm not sure) a black snake in the
basement. I did take exception to it sleeping on top of the freezer, as it
got curious when I opened the door and stuck its head down and I almost
shut its head in the door, so S/O put snake repellent pellets on top of the
freezer, but otherwise we pretty much left it alone. I didn't bother it, as
I'd rather have a black snake than mice. I called it Kali.

On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 1:25 PM, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Good for you, Jay! I had a similar adventure several years ago in the
> mountains, but I was by myself. I managed to cut the netting off, and the
> snake crawled away into the woods. I mentioned it to a couple of
> parishioners a few days later, and they thought I'd lost my mind! To their
> minds, the only good snake was a dead snake.
>
> > On Apr 28, 2017, at 1:15 PM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I went out on the lower porch about half an hour ago to take in the sun
> and
> > the breeze, and while I was there I noticed a black snake that seemed to
> be
> > caught in netting which S/O had  stapled around the corner post years ago
> > to assist the autumn clematis in its journey upward. Poor snake seemed to
> > be pretty thoroughly entangled, and knowing that these guys are not
> > venomous, I went and got S/O to have him look and see if there was
> anything
> > we could do. His first judgment was that the snake had expired, but when
> I
> > told him I'd seen it move, he got gloves, scissors, and a sawed-off broom
> > handle and proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes carefully snipping
> > netting and vine away from our scaly friend, which had got itself MOST
> > thoroughly entangled. I assisted by holding vines this way and that, and
> > the snake seemed to understand what we were doing and actually positioned
> > itself as much as it was able to so that S/O could reach netting that was
> > in between coils of its body. At last we managed to get it free, even
> > though we couldn't get all of the netting completely off it, and it
> crawled
> > off down the porch. I looked for it later and it was gone. S/O thinks it
> > may have gone down to the woodpile to rest and try to scratch the
> remaining
> > netting off. I'm just happy we found it and were able to free it. I am
> fond
> > of black snakes and I would hate for it to have died tangled in that
> > netting.
>