A Crafty Beast in the Garden

It's that time of year where we're picking muscadines off our vine in the side yard garden.  Muscadines are a type of grapevine that grow in these parts.  They have thick skin and a lot of seeds, but the grape itself is very tasty.  I like to eat them sun-warmed right off the vine and spit the seeds on the ground.  We have many young muscadine vines coming up all over the place now.  Russ took one with him to his home and is adding to his vineyard.  He has his vines growing on a hurricane fence.  Our vine gets bigger every year and it is trellised on a cattle panel supported by two t-posts on the ends.  Russ was a horticulture major and explained to me that if we had pruned our vine properly, it would have made more grapes this year.  When the plant goes dormant, we'll give it a haircut so that we have a more abundant harvest next year.

I keep a watchful eye when picking muscadines.  Red wasps love to build their nests under the canopy of grape leaves.  They are hard to see and then when you reach in to pull some grapes off the vine, they fly out and sting you.  Last year I was fortunate to see the nest before they got me.  It was as big as a belt buckle and full of angry aggressive wasps.  In the old days, I'd cut a Dr. Pepper can in half and fill the bottom with gasoline and douse the nest with the gas.  It 'freezes' them instantly.  This method is a no-go for killing wasps around things we're going to eat.  It would not only kill the wasps, but would kill part of the muscadine vine, too.  So I put a generous amount of Dawn dishwashing liquid into a cup and swirled some hot water in the cup.  I through that on the nest and the wasps fell to the ground, unable to fly.  My leather boot put them out of their misery and I plucked the nest off the vine and stepped on it, too.

As I was searching for ripe muscadines and keeping my eyes peeled for wasps, I spotted this dude:

It's only a harmless garter snake, but it made me immediately think of Genesis 3:1 that says, "Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.  And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"

We have numerous garter snakes all over the place.  They're small and slither under the French doors.  We have to constantly pick them up and throw them back outside.  They eat frogs, lizards, geckos, and worms.  All their favorite foods are around our house, so we're constantly in contact with them.  Sometimes, their desire to get into the house gets them in trouble.  Last week one got slammed in the French door by accident, suffering an injury not unlike the one mentioned in Genesis 3:15.

The serpent I saw in the muscadine vine, fortunately, did not speak to me!  I am under no restrictions from which tree (or vine) in the garden from which I can eat, so I continued picking a bowlful of delicious muscadines.

Another Snake We Won't Kill

We were introduced to snakes back in Genesis in the Garden of Eden.  Vile.  Evil.  Devious.  Nasty.  Scheming.  Lying.  Treacherous.  We hate snakes.  We have snakes around here.  Not talking snakes, mind you, but hardly a week goes by that we don't see snakes.  Mostly garter snakes.  We don't ever kill garter snakes.  They are so prevalent around here.  They'll come inside the house sometimes.  We pick them up and toss them back out in the landscaping beds, so they can go about their business of eating frogs and lizards.

Next we have chicken snakes.  Lots of 'em.  In the past, we'd kill them.  We didn't want them eating our eggs.  We'd kill them with a shovel.  We'd kill them with a board or a pipe or any blunt object.  We'd kill them by placing ceramic and wooden eggs in the nesting boxes.  When the fake eggs disappeared, we secretly rejoiced, knowing that the serpent was going to die of a really, really bad case of constipation.  But then... things changed.

Our rat problem out at the barn got out of control.  More rats than we could count.  I poisoned them.  I shot them off the rafters with a .22 rifle loaded with rat shot.  I used classic rat traps.  I even had great success with a 5 gallon bucket half filled with water to drown the rats.  But the best thing we ever did was to stop killing the chicken snakes.  Allowing the chicken snakes to live paid dividends in terms of drastically reducing our rat population.  Chicken snakes get very large and can be scary, but they are docile and generally don't bother you if you don't bother them.

So today, Russ walked out in the garage and yelled, "Hey, there's a big chicken snake right outside the door!"  Except it wasn't a chicken snake.  It was a speckled king snake!  These guys are our friends.  They eat birds, rodents, frogs, lizards, and other SNAKES.  They kill by constricting their prey.  For that reason, we always set these guys free.  Here he is right here:

King Snake in the Garage

King snakes grow to around 48 inches long.  He was shaking his tail at me like a rattle snake, but he never did strike at me.  The speckled king snake is aptly named because every scale has a yellow-white spot.  It is really quite a beautiful snake.  They are gentle.  In fact, some people keep them as pets.  Not us, we'll get him out of our garage and back out into the landscaping so he can do his thing.

Speckled King Snake

I picked him up with a garden tool.  I think he was happy to be back outside.  Garages aren't their natural habitat.  The speckled king snake actually likes wet areas.  Well, he's in the right place.

I hope he stays around.  We want him to take care of "bad" snakes in our area - snakes like the Cottonmouth and the Copperhead.  Maybe he'll find his queen snake and make a family.