Friday morning I reached out the kitchen door and pushed the button for the garage door opener.
As the door lifted and the morning light brightened the inside of the garage, I couldn’t help noticing a couple of shiny black eyes staring at me from a few inches away.
How odd.
The eyes, it turned out, were attached to a large snake draped over some shelves.
An unexpected turn of events, to say the least, and it got my heart rate to a level high enough for me to claim it later as my cardiovascular workout for the day.
The visitor was a king snake, I realized in a calmer moment, and probably was a five-footer.
This was good news. Instead of people, king snakes eat all manner of other snakes and small mammals.
A few years ago, when I still raised turkeys and chickens, I was visited by a 6-foot king snake whom I named Rex.
We met one afternoon as both of us reached for a turkey egg a hen had laid in a brush pile.
We were close enough to shake hands or use the Covid-19 elbow bump. Turns out, that was closer than either of us really wanted to be to the other.
More unexpected interactions followed and I contemplated carrying a shovel any time I went outside.
It was then that I realized: It had been at least a couple of months since I had seen a pygmy rattler around my five acres.
Previously, pygmy rattlers were as thick as, oh, I don’t know, maybe cream gravy, if a simile will stretch that far without snapping.
Suffice it to say they were common enough for one of my laying hens to catch one in her pen. I have video and still photos of her running around with it in her beak and flapping it against the ground like she would a grasshopper.
It took a while but I connected the dot of Rex’s arrival to that of the pygmy rattlers’ disappearance. Soon, I took a more cordial attitude toward him.
Pygmy rattlers are hardly the threat of, say, a copperhead or a full-sized rattler, but still. They’re snakes and they have rattles.
Rex and I communicated telepathically. I told him that he was welcome to all the rodents and distant relatives he could eat or carry, but that I would appreciate him leaving the turkey eggs alone.
He promised to comply unless one of the turkeys laid an egg unavoidably close to him and he said he would appreciate it if I would move the hoe and shovel to the back of the tool shed. That was four years ago, if I remember correctly,
That was four years ago, if I remember correctly, and I didn’t see another pygmy rattler until last fall.
I was hoping Rex would return this year. This one isn’t Rex but he has a well-fed look about him that makes me feel good.
The only thing that remains is to explain to Kindra how having a large snake in the garage was a reason to celebrate.