An Unwelcome Visitor in the Coop

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Snake Farm – It just sounds nasty
Snake Farm – Well, it pretty much is
Snake Farm – It’s a reptile house
Snake Farm … Uuuggghhhhh

— Ray Wylie Hubbard

Earlier this summer, while my Beautiful Mystery Companion was out of town, I went to collect eggs from our hens. I peered into their nest boxes and saw nothing, which was unusual. The girls are reliable layers. I didn’t think much of it, but I noticed that a trash can lid on the coop’s floor was a bit askew. We keep diatomaceous earth powder in the lid to reduce insects. The lid was perched on a brick paver to keep the shavings out. Being OCD, I picked the lid up to set it straight. Curled beneath it was a huge black snake that began flicking its tongue at me.

I never really participated in track events in school. Too short to be much of a broad jumper or hurdler. But if there were an event for Backward Broad Jump by a Septuagenarian, I am confident I could win a medal. When I spotted that snake, I jumped backward at least 3 feet and flew the coop. By the time I returned with a pistol and a garden rake, the snake was gone. The hens clucked outside, not a care in the world.

Despite our best efforts to fortify this coop with a limestone rock base, hardware cloth buried along its sides, poultry netting attached to the roof and a surrounding chain-link fence, a chicken snake had made its way inside and was enjoying farm-fresh eggs for breakfast at our expense.

It is not quite accurate to say I am scared of snakes. We share Three Geese Farm with all manner of serpents, both poisonous and benign. I generally ignore the benign ones, though that chicken snake hiding under the trash can lid was taking its life into its own non-existent hands, having startled the bejeebers out of me. This summer’s hot, dry weather has brought out snakes slithering around the well house and darting around the corner when I am mowing near the shop. Once I determine they are nonvenomous, I leave them alone.

Copperheads and water moccasins receive no mercy. The tractor bucket is effective at pinning venomous snakes that wander into the areas where our donkey and longhorn steers graze. Once my BMC had returned home, the chicken snake had more than met its match. She pinned it with a garden rake, its gullet stuffed with a couple of eggs, but it wriggled free. While chicken snakes are also called “rat snakes” for their fondness for rodents, it is far easier for a snake to grab a couple of eggs from nest boxes than to chase a wood rat in the pasture. The snake was certain to return.

It was time to buy a snake grabber. I found one online that was 65 inches long, with a pair of serrated tongs attached to a cable running inside the pole to a handle on the other end. Sure enough, just a few days later, my BMC caught the snake. She took it down the hill to the woods and let it loose, admonishing it to chase rats and field mice and leave the eggs alone.

The snake did not heed her advice. A few weeks later, she caught it again! This time, by coincidence, she was FaceTiming our daughter Abbie, who took screenshots of her mom, the Snake Wrangler. (One photo accompanies this piece.) This time, Mr. Chicken Snake was taken down the 100-yard driveway and to Glade Creek, which crosses the highway on the east boundary of Three Geese Farm, about a quarter mile away. That should be enough to ensure he does not return.

I readily admit there could have been two different chicken snakes, though both were about the same length — not that I got anywhere close either time she wrangled the snake. I was not technically an eyewitness to either capture. I was content to learn about it afterward. If another chicken snake shows up, it should know it has more than met its match with my snake-wrangling spouse.

That snake’s best bet is to wait until my BMC is out of town again.

 

 

 

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