Saturday, May 16, 2009

A Snake Saves the Day

We have a gopher in the garden. He has been creating tunnels under our peas and destroying them one by one. The battle between Glenn and the gopher has been intense this week. One could find Glenn in the garden digging up Gopher holes, filling in gopher holes, putting road flare smoke into holes, and even setting our cat over a hole. The gopher has won every battle by digging new tunnels, avoiding the smoke and laughing at our inept cat.

Then this beautiful gopher snake came into our lives. My sister and her family accidently picked up the snake (it climbed under their car and hid for a week) while visiting the Carrizo Plain. My sister gave this wonderful gift to Glenn after she learned of his gopher problems.


Here is a picture of my mom holding the snake. She was the only one brave enough to touch the snake so I could photograph him. I made her wear our bee gloves.

We put the hungry snake into the gopher's most recent hole. So far the snake appears to be winning. We have not lost any vegetables to the gopher in the last twenty four hours. We did, however, lose some trees to deer and have a new bug eating our artichoke plant. And the battle continues....

7 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh! I love it! I laughed when I read about the cat being put over the gopher hole. We have 8 cats and they are essentially good for nothing except laying in the sun and being cute. lol.

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  2. I love it! What a fun and enteraining post! (I had to laugh too about the cat) It's about time someone puts snakes in a positive light! Every creature has a purpose, see? Isn't it wonderful? I mean, sorry the gopher had to die, but the snake has to eat and so do you.

    I can't wait to find out what natural predator you'll get for the bug that eats your artichokes...and the deer...chicken wire?

    Great post, Jess!

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  3. I love the photos although I intensly dislike snakes. We have problems with rabbits and deer and at this point I think (emphasis on 'think") I would like to introduce a snake into the garden. Although, that begs the question, "how do you make it stay in the garden only"...lol just kidding. My cat watches the rabbits run all over and looks at me as if to say, "aren't you going to do anything?"

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  4. Kudos to you for recognizing a benefical natural predator. I have 4 cats that I love, but they don't hold a candle to the efficiency of a snake. I also have a gopher snake.

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  5. I love snakes and actually I have two snakes at home and I adore them, but I'm always careful when I'm about to feed them because once my uncle got bitten by his snake because he got distracted when he was feeding the snake

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