9.
Garden Boy is looking a little ratty...needs new stuffing...but he'll just have to get in line...I'm not twins, you know...sometimes I'm not even one.

... a nest of chickens in his hair....


The next picture is an old moccasin of Jack's that used to be overflowing with Hen&Chicks, but the turkeys made short work of that. They are as destructive as a herd of cows...they don't eat my plants, but pick them to pieces for the fun of it. I made the mistake of not keeping the moccasin inside the fence where the garden is.
The snake is a pet I brought from eastern Oregon. I seem to have no snakes here at all....at least at our place. I'd like a nice little garden snake sunning itself on a rock by the fish pond....at first I though Sally and Bekka were keeping the snakes away and then it dawned on me I never see them anywhere on our place, and I'm always out in the woods, poking around, turning over rocks, just generally butting in.

I like snakes....I like all reptiles...
Once we lived where we had lots of garden snakes so I caught one and brought him in to live in an aquarium....without an adequate lid. So I improvised a lid and left for awhile to make a good lid. When I came back the snake was gone...and we hadn't even gotten to know each other. I looked evvvvvvvvvverywhere. No snake. Turned the house upside down and shook it. No snake. I knew Jack was not going to be happy about this so I added it to my list of NeverNeverTell things, and life went on as usual. One day I decided to put some goldfish in the empty aquarium and I found an open box of food left over from my last goldfish. I put my finger in the box to lift the tucked down lid...and felt the coiled up snake!!! That box went flying off my hand like a home run in Yankee Stadium. I like snakes but I don't want them sneaking up on me. He had been coiled up in the box...I can't imagine how he fit....for at least two months......Or maybe he just spent the days there, and prowled around at night. I let him go....figured he'd earned it.