My Wild Kingdom

This is the way we mow our lawns out here in the boonies:  we wait until the grass gets high, then goes to seed, and then we wait to see who blinks first.  After one lawn gets mowed, a day or two goes by and another victim gives in, until we all have somewhat newly mowed lawns.  Except for my neighbor who lives across the street and mows the lawn every week.  We mostly ignore him.

I mowed my front lawn four or five weeks ago.  For a couple of weeks I felt pretty good because it had been mowed.  Then for a week or so I just ignored it.  Then it got to bothering me, so I've been trying to work myself up to the two-hour task for a few days.  Yesterday I was relieved to see that it really, really looked like rain, so I decided not to mow.  I am going away for ten days in the middle of July, and if I put off mowing just a little longer, I won't have to do it again till I get back.  So I was at the point where I'd like to get it over with, but I could wait.  Then, around noon, the sun came out smiling.

I don't have a drink till five, and I don't do yard work after noon.  This makes for a fairly stress-free retirement.

So today I planned on mowing.  Even though the morning came up cloudy.  I figured it had to be a ruse, like yesterday.

Around ten, I went out to the shed and opened the door.

I've lived out here in the rural south for over fifteen years now.  I'm more scared of things breaking down and having to fix them than of running into critters.  I've run the lawn mower over a nest of ground-wasps and was covered in stings:

This is what it looked like, except
I have more hair.

Currently, there is a spider that persists in building an elaborate web that attaches to my blueberry bushes.  Every day or two when I go out to pick berries, I take a twig and tear off the web.  I usually leaves webs intact, respecting the amount of labor involved, but not if it interferes with something essential, like berry-picking.  Undaunted the little critter gets right back to work, and I end up destroying yet another web a couple of days' later.  It may be my imagination, but lately the effort has seemed just a bit less enthusiastic.  I hope when berry-picking is over my friend will not have given up and will make one last and more lasting attempt.

Given that, I don't just stick my hand in dark corners of my shed.

My favorite critter story is the afternoon that a pack of dogs chased a bobcat onto my porch, where it sat and watched me watch it for five hours, until Animal Control came.  After sending the bobcat off for parts unknown:

Fairly relieved Animal Control Officer:  "So, if you have any more trouble, if it, uh, comes back, just give us a call."

 Me:  "And you'll come out and toss another glass of water at it?"

To continue.  I opened the shed and there lying on top of the door was a snake.

I considered carefully closing the door and returning to the house.  Then I thought about the very long grass.  And then I decided that if I just walked away, I would never want to open that door again, just in case that snake was still lying there, waiting.

  

I walked carefully around the door to the side of the shed, carefully got hold of the hose, turned off the nozzle, turned on the faucet, and went round to the door, never taking my eyes off the snake, lest it take off and leave me not knowing where it might be hiding.  But it was still there, obviously quite comfortable.

I opened the nozzle and then pointed it at the snake.  For several seconds it barely moved, and then I realized that it had opened its mouth so that it could get the full stream.  I imagined it must be thirsty.  Or was just enjoying a long unexpected shower.  After a surprisingly long time, it began to move toward the shed, and I stopped it with the water.  Then it wound around itself, so that it looked like it might have been two snakes.  Then it went back to position #1.  This went on for quite a few minutes.  As long as it didn't seem interested in leaping the few feet it would take to reach me, I was okay with that.

Finally it decided to escape via the roof.

I'm not used to snakes that are not at ground level.  There are bunches of new cats in the neighborhood lately, and I'm thinking the snakes have had to find places that are a bit more challenging to the feline stalker.  We've all heard stories about snakes that hide in trees and fall onto people as they walk past.  So I would have been happier if my friend had slithered down the door of the shed and away into the shrubbery.  But I figured that this was probably the best it was going to get.  Unlikely that it would come back for me.  And the damned lawn was not going to mow itself.

So I cautiously got the mower out of the shed.  And now I have a nicely mowed lawn that I can enjoy for a couple of weeks, ignore for a couple more, and then eventually get around to mowing again.  I'm hoping the snake will have found a new home by then.