exciting days

We’ve had some exciting days here on the farm lately. The kind of excitement that gets your heart pounding. Maybe not for good reasons either. I can easily make you understand completely by typing one word – s n a k e !

We’ve had/seen 4 rattle snakes in the last two weeks, today Sue found a huge skin, from a non-rattler, but unknown snake over by the main coop. It’s quite a spine tingler when you look down and in front of you is a huge (or even not so huge) rattler! One rattler was over by the RCW in the morning for a couple of days. He was holing himself up in an area that we couldn’t safely get to. We tried to make it so the chickens would just leave him alone – he would be gone by the time afternoon chores rolled around. He was there for a couple of days and then decided it wasn’t the best place to be. I hope he cleaned out the mice before he left. The next one was in the coop with Renata’s girls, Sue got that one all by herself. Same night there was one over by Flat-Top’s group. We couldn’t get to him, he was too feisty. Next night it was right by the back steps of the porch. That one Sue was able to get, but he was not at all happy to be relocated. Last night, the one by Flat-Top was back again. But after everyone was abed, there was no sign of the snake. This morning, Sue came down the driveway holding this huge skin. It was easily 3.5 feet long! She found it by the dove enclosure. Hope it’s out eating mice and not menacing the birds. So far, we haven’t seen the egg count take any type of significant dive – so I’m hoping that menacing isn’t the case. There was a neighbor visiting at the time Sue found it. She told us that the wild birds will use it to line their nests, so Sue hung it on the fence. We’ll see if it disappears.

The recent winds have also been quite exciting. As you can see from this screen shot of our weather device, we had winds gusting up to 57 mph this week. It’s been really, really crazy. Hot, dry, and consistently relentless. We’ve stepped up on the watering of the trees and bushes around the house. The roses out front took an exceptionally hard beating this past week or so. I think with regular watering we’ll be able to help thing through this difficult patch. I can’t wait for the monsoons to come into their full season. It’ll just be easier on the plants and all concerned.