[Magdalen] Taking care of our neighbors in the yard

[Charles Wohlers]

Yes - I still remember hiking a good number of years ago with my father & 
other Carolina Mt. Club hikers in the Pisgah Nat'l. Forest (western NC) and 
being startled by a rattlesnake doing its thing in the trail. One of the 
hikers beat it dead with a stick - I was not happy.

No snakes in the basement (AFAIK), but there are plenty of garter snakes 
around the property, and I have seen a red-bellied one once. All small and 
harmless.

And - just got back from looking for the first wildflowers of the season. 
Lots of spring beauties out already, saw one trout lily out and a few in 
bud. Also trilliums in bud and a bloodroot out which I had planted a couple 
of years ago. All quite early for here.

Chad Wohlers
Woodbury, VT USA
chadwohl at satucket.com



-----Original Message----- 
From: Grace Cangialosi
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2017 1:25 PM
To: magdalen at herberthouse.org
Subject: Re: [Magdalen] Taking care of our neighbors in the yard

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.