The recent rains we’ve had (yay! The lakes finally got some water) kick-started all sorts of growth. Mainly weeds, but also some of our shrubs.
So the hubby went out today to do some pruning. His backyard effort was interrrupted, however, by a snake that crawled from a bush to sun.
Still relatively new to the region and not being herpetologically up to speed, the hubby wisely moved on to another patch of greenery … in the front yard.
But later we both went out back and the reptile was still there. I was only able to get this one photo before he retreated into the overgrowth.
A quick online search and we’re pretty confident that our backyard resident is a Texas patchnose snake. You can compare that site’s photos with this enlargement of my shot. It’s a bit blurry, but you can see his face a little better.
We were glad to learn it’s not poisonous. But we still plan to give him his space.
Hunting herps: That was the only snake we saw, so I don’t think we need to call in snake specialist Samuel L. Jackson, most recently seen in Snakes on a Plane and Black Snake Moan.
But those movies got me thinking about other snake references. Here are a few I came up with:
Anaconda — B movie with a decent cast. I guess everybody has bills to pay.
Raiders of the Lost Ark — OK, it isn’t a movie about snakes,
but the scene with Indy facing the pit full of the slithery creatures — "Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes?" — is classic.
Escape from New York — Again, taking liberties, but Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken is a great movie hero.
SSSSSSS — Cheesy snakes from the ’70s with Strother Martin.
And musically, I have to include Joe Ely’s version of Long Snake Moan from his Live Shots album.
