༻ Snake Relocated ༺

At our farm we separate local prairie snakes into two categories: friendly and not-friendly. Bull snakes are the type we like to see. They are fairly docile, eat mice, and some say keep the other type, rattle snakes, away. Here is a bull snake looking for mice around the house:

This week, sadly, I inadvertently relocated one of the farm's bull snakes into town.

Since my car is parked outside, I do get rabbits and mice in the engine occasionally. Well, a bull snake must have been looking around in there for a meal when I decided to go to town. I made a few stops, running errands and leaving the car in different spots, as my day progressed. Here is a picture that shows the stripped tail, a sure sign that this snake is not a rattler:

Around mid-day I was enjoying lunch, with the car windows open, at a local grocery store's parking lot. An attendant walked near me to get grocery carts. Suddenly, he started pointing to my car tire and said, "Look, there is a garter snake!"

I looked out my side window and saw the familiar grey and black stripes of a snake. It looked pretty big ! I hopped out and came around to take a look. Sure enough, it was a bull snake ! I could only imagine that he had dropped out from under my car.

A few people gathered and someone got a tree branch to see if they could pick the snake up to relocate it to a nearby field. But the snake wasn't interested in that, so it slithered to the car parked behind me, and zip, fast as could be, it went up inside a Ford Mustang. The owner was one of the people standing around, so at least he knew what was happening !!

The snake didn't come out, and since the man with the Mustang started a conversation with another person, I went on my way. Hopefully he drove to a park and sat for awhile until the bull snake found a suitable new home.