Our swallows got swallowed
We have had a swallows’ nest in the gable over our back door. They raise used to raise a couple of broods of young every year and do did a beautiful job at keeping the mosquitoes under control. They even killed off the wasps that tried to establish a colony there. See the empty wasp nest below the bird nest?
Today, instead of the chorus of hungry baby birds, we heard silence when we opened the back door. Here’s what we saw when we looked up:
I feel sure you are missing the full horror of the sight, but this guy is dangling directly above my back door, precariously wrapped around a birds’ nest. I think we can assume the nest is empty.
The question is, what do we do now? And also, how in the name of all that’s good did he get up there?
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How horrendous, Kim! I think I’d die. We a little bitty snake that lives under our deck, and he creeps me out. I can’t imagine a huge-ish monster dangling over my back door!
Call your husband and insist on a death sentence for the snake. We saw a snake crawling up my dad’s outside door. He was going along the edge with the hinges. EWWW>….
Bummer!
You could just move him into the bushes to keep your mouse population from coming into the house…A forked stick and a husband’s long arms should do the trick!
.22 birdshot ought to do the trick…
what kind of snake is that?
I didn’t think anything could be worse than the hordes of spiders you had last year.
AAAAAAH!
Oh Yikes. I have two snake experiences in my life:
1. When I was quite young, living in Los Angeles, we visited friends on their ranch a few hours away in California. I was in the car with my mom’s friend, when she slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the car, and proceeded to shoot the snake. With her gun. Which she had in the glove compartment. I know that probably doesn’t seem odd to people in Texas, but remember. Los Angeles. I was honestly more freaked out by the fact that she had a gun than I was by the snake.
2. I was a little older, living in Arizona now. There was a rattlesnake on our front porch, right outside the front door, when we got home one day. My dad cut its head off with a hoe while my mom and sisters and I had about 12 fits of hysteria amongst us, and then, because my dad is from France, he skinned it, marinated it in white wine and garlic, and sauteed it in butter. We ate it for dinner. My parents still have the dried skin somewhere around their house.
I say follow scenario #2 with your snake, but don’t necessarily eat it for dinner.
WHICH IS WHY I CAN’T LIVE IN THE COUNTRY!
Seriously, nope no way.
What kind of snake is he? I am from Texas and I can’t decifer?
AAAACKKKK! Bleck! You are braver than me if you can take a picture of it. I would say, “Ummm honey please come home, you have a visitor!”
YIKES. However, I’m delighted by the triad hierarchy of creatures represented in the photo: wasps devoured by swallows devoured by snake. I side with J and suggest that you all devour the snake. And then stay away from the zoo for awhile.
Well, if it were me, the only option would be to faint. Snakes are the only thing on earth I cannot handle at all. Then when I came to I would demand that we move to Siberia.
Might I suggest moving?
I am such a suck when it comes to … ummm… I prefer to not even type it.
Shockingly enough, I did grow up in the country, but we only had garter snakes!
funny,
but we dealt with the same thing in our little slice of Texas today too. Except these (notice the plural here) snakes managed to get down a chimney. They were young thins ones (rat snakes) measuring in at only 3′ long. Two of them were caught. One still to go which was left to the cat. Luckily this didn’t happen in my own home but rather in my step-dad’s mom’s house. Since the snakes were brought back to our property we had to bring them to their demise so they wouldn’t get the chickens or their eggs. Can you tell it is mid-spring in Texas???
Okay, that is a very good reason I could never live in Texas, along with the spiders… Guter Got, what an experience that must be!!!