Snakeless in Seattle

Or “Sixteen Feet of Elbow Room”

We have not lost another egg to a snake (that we know of) for a week, and have now transplanted three black rat snakes,  noosed in or around the garden shed/henhouse to an abandoned property a mile away. So far, into the snake bag, we’ve inserted two five footers and one six footer (today.)

Of note, not a one has offered to strike, or to musk (if you don’t know this, you’re fortunate) or act in any way except to want to move along. They have all escaped the noose of the snake-grabber because I don’t want to suffocate them or crush their ribs. If we didn’t have eggs to tempt them, I’d be delighted to have them around.

But it is a perfect Final Solution (except for causing the Goose Creek Herptile Team to completely do something other than the task they intended to do at unexpected times of any day of the week.) Here’s how it will work:

By the end of the summer, at this rate, we will have relocated maybe three dozen snakes to a common habitat–so many that the only thing to eat there by fall will be snakes. Snakes eating snakes.

The last one standing (er, slithering)–will be an eight foot long one foot diameter specimen. He will at last begin with his tail and, meal completed and snake consumed, we will be free of egg eaters on Goose Creek.

And we’ll be knee-deep in rats, mice, voles, chipmunks, squirrels and….