And the Livin’ is Easy?

Every time I encounter a snake I end up screaming, apparently involuntarily. It’s like I shriek (briefly, not in a blood-curling manner) almost before I fully register “snake!” I saw the striped tail of one such creature slipping under the porch steps this week and realized it was bigger than your average garter snake. We later we watched from afar and gently startled it with spray from the garden hose to cause it to slither away.

This was an Eastern milk snake (I looked it up right away), about 2 or 3 feet long, and harmless to humans. Apparently, it got the name because they supposedly sucked milk from a cow’s udders, however ridiculous and impossible this idea sounds. I’m so glad we live somewhere where there are no venomous snakes. While walking down the street another day, I saw a suspicious-looking stick on the edge of the road. As I got closer the “stick” slithered back into the undergrowth. I didn’t scream that time and at least I prevented the snake from getting squashed on the road.

Snakes always remind me of Emily Dickinson’s poem about encountering a snake, “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass”, in which she writes, “But never met this Fellow\Attended or alone\Without a tighter Breathing\and Zero at the Bone.” Poetically put, but we know exactly what you mean, Emily.

In other nature notes, there is a wild duck out there, still carefully watching over her one remaining duckling. I don’t want to know what happened to the other little ducklings. Watching a wild water bird (duck, goose, or swan) with a newly-hatched brood of little ones is nerve-wracking. You just know they’re not all going to make it.

 We’ve also been helping snappers (some of them pretty big) cross the road to get to water and sometimes think, “Hmmm, are we helping these turtles to the water just so they can grab baby ducks from below?” I always sympathize with prey, but obviously predators have to eat too.

I’d make a terrible wildlife photographer. You have to let nature take its course. You can’t just intervene and chase off a predator. Oh well, it’s not like our backyard is the Serengeti. By the way, you can help snapping turtles cross the road by gently nudging them in the right direction using a plastic snow shovel. From the turtle’s rear, needless to say!

A great blue heron caught a large fish yesterday and had a look on its face that said “what do I do with this thing now?” almost like a cartoon character.     But he or she managed to finally get its dinner down its gullet.

We didn’t see any piping plovers on the beach at Horseneck on a recent visit, but on that day the wind was blowing sand around so viciously that we retreated to the more sheltered Allens Pond Wildlife Sanctuary nearby. This Massachusetts Audubon site is always an interesting place to visit and you can walk right along the shore too. If only they had a larger parking lot. We also saw a couple of great egrets, majestic white birds, in the salt marsh there

Speaking of marshes reminds me of mosquitoes, which are vicious and prolific this year (all that rain). Deerflies are a nuisance too around here and apparently the greenflies are especially horrible up on the salt marshes on the North Shore.

I’ve read that the reason there are so many ticks this year is due to the banner crop of acorns that oak trees have been producing in the past couple of mast years. Populations of animals such as squirrels and deer are increasing from having so much to eat. And the ticks are having a field day (literally) with all these woodland creatures to glom on to for a blood meal. As if that isn’t enough, there is a bumper crop of poison ivy this year, oh joy. Maybe stay on the screened porch and just watch summer from afar?

And this isn’t even to mention Mother Nature’s bipolar episodes in June. For several days the heat is unbearable, with humidity too. Then the next day the temperature drops 30 degrees and it’s rainy and gloomy again. The heat will surely be back. I believe there have been occasional nice days (75 degrees, sunny and dry) but they are few and far between. But at least summer is beautiful and it isn’t snowing.