Tying up loose ends and... coming to terms with snakes.

Tying up loose ends and…

coming to terms with snakes.

 

After my blog about the dogs, Silke asked me about the snake…

She’s right. It needs to be dealt with here. I was going to write about it later but, for all you pet lovers out there, THAT snake bears further comment now.

 

But first I want to catch you up on the mice, inextricably linked as the two species are…

 

Two days ago I finally covered my little hoop garden with the hardware cloth that I had, too long ago purchased. Hardware cloth, if you don’t know, is sort of like chicken wire but the holes are square and smaller.  The “cloth” is sturdier than chicken wire and much more critter proof.  I bought a roll that was 100 feet long and 4 feet wide and let it sit by my shed while the mouse rampaged my garden.  Finally spurred on to make use of my investment, I buried 50 feet of the roll, (unrolled, of course) six inches deep, around the circumference of the garden.  Before I did that I had cut the length into four sections and on the long side of each, bent a 6 inch strip at 90 degrees.  In this way, once I finished the job, part of the “cloth” would sit in the ground, perpendicular to the garden so critters would have a hard time digging in.  Imagine an “L” with the leg portion buried in the dirt, facing out, away from the garden.  For those of you who read my dog blog, it’s essentially the same thing I did with the hog fencing to prevent Trigo from digging OUT of the property.  A length of wire fencing was laid down and then covered with dirt.  The animal that tried to dig out or in, as in the case of my garden, would run into an impenetrable barrier.

 

I just love animals!

That evening, in case I had not created a secure enough block to prevent another rodent invasion, I covered my plants with upside-down buckets; cucumber (one), tomato (two), brussel sprouts (two, there had been three), eggplant (two, also reduced in number by one;) one, three, and five gallon sized containers, the varying sizes having been dictated by the individual plant and how much the mouse had devoured.

 

We were set!  I went to bed.

 

I swear to you, eggplant leaves must be sweet indeed because the next day that damn mouse had removed three leaves and the rest of the blossoms from one of my plants.  

¡HIJOLE!

 

Glen has since asked me how I know that it is just one mouse enjoying the fruits of my labor.  I had to answer that I really didn’t know. But I had deduced that; since there was usually only one hole going under just one bucket and; only one plant at a time being systematically stripped of it’s appendages and; only a few of those limbs disappearing each night, that I had only one forager, one rival, one perpetrator to foil.

 

One or ten or three hundred thieves, I love eggplant and I was not giving up. So, in addition to having fortified the perimeter, the next day, out of a piece of the remaining hardware cloth, I built a cage around the weakening plant.  I dug the cage into the ground and created a woven top so the mouse couldn’t climb over an unfinished edge.  Then, in the evening, I placed the buckets over the plants and built up a small mound of dirt around each rim hoping that extra dirt would deter the thug from digging.

 

Today, my cucumber is missing half a leaf.

 

So, there’s that.

Consider yourself caught up on mice and gardening.

 

 

We do have the snake issue still dangling…

 

Which might not, if you haven’t gathered by now, after reading the city mouse and country mouse saga, be an issue at all.  

 

Consider this: 

 

This morning on the dog walk Buddy was doing his usual “Ooooh, a hole, a hole.  Rabbit?  Rabbit?  Mouse?  Mouse? Badger?”

 

“Leave it!” I told him. 

 

“Great smell.  Great smell!”  Pant, pant, sniff, sniff.  “Nope,” wag, wag, pant, pant, pant, “not leaving it.”

 

“Buddy get AWAY. Not the badger,” and so we were off to the next hole.   A quarter mile farther on he trapped a couple of young mice in the root system of a dead Juniper tree.

 

“Oooooooh!  Yummy, yummy!”

 

I checked the prey. The poor little things were all tucked up in a slit at the base of the trunk. I could only see their tails, their back feet, and their butts.  There were two of them there and quite cute, even given the view.

 

The trunk lay 200 yards from the house, pretty close considering I live on 40 acres.  I just didn’t have the heart to sic him on them.

“Leave it, Buddy, c’mon.  Let’s go home.”

And he did, with surprising ease, leave them alone.

 

Do you see how this is all really my fault, the garden, the sprung traps, the orphaned babies, from previous blogging?

 

But it isn’t just mice.  Wood Rat (aka Pack Rat) nests are springing up all over the property.  I have seen no less than seven new nests, sticks and leaves, but most especially cholla pieces, growing in size on an hourly basis around my home since Summer began. Pack Rats cause thousands (I mean it.  I am not kidding) thousands of dollars in damage if left to their own devices.  

AND THEY HAVE DEVICES.

 

Pack Rats are about three to four times the size of a deer mouse, have little black eyes and a hairless tail. Many times, while dismantling nests, I have happened across the builders and I must admit, that they are pretty darn cute.  They are nocturnal while I am not. In fact, I have been known to carefully destroy nests in the middle of the day, waking the slumbering owners as I do so.  They gaze at me, surprised, as if to say, “What do you think you are doing? Where did YOU come from? Pshaw.”

 

It takes a few moments for a rat to fully awaken before it galumphs away.  Unlike mice, a Pack Rat does not bolt for the nearest exit.  Surprised out of a slumber, they are much more like my sister… NOT a morning person, but, rather slow and groggy, not inclined to conversation.

 

The nests of these rats are often filled with bright shiny objects stolen from porches; BIC lighters, or baling twine. Coins and paper and insulation and wire and fabrics and leaves and tin cans and nails and screws and nuts and bolts and keys and wrenches and dog shit.

 

Thus the name.  

Some Pack Rat’snests are hundreds of years old and paydirt for archaeologists, I am told.  

While I may not like the damage they wreak I, without hesitation, from experience, respect Pack Rats immensely.  

 

When I first moved to my home (which is a geodesic dome with a poured earthen floor) a Pack Rat had created a nest under my floor which she accessed from an entry way she had constructed outside the house, under the edge of the building.  The dome had stood empty for nigh 12 years and had become the Disneyland of vermin.  It wasn’t pretty and it took some work to make it habitable for humans, but once I had cleaned out the inside of the house and was able to properly move in, I turned my focus on the Pack Rat nest under the dome.  It was a brilliant design, one had to admit, a great way for a rat to stay warm in the winter but cool in the summer.  Poured earthen floors are good that way.

 

I set to work evicting the rat by collecting a good number of fist sized stones to pack into the hole.  When I thought I had enough rock, I shoved them, by hand, one at a time, as far as I could into the opening.  Then, using the end of a broomstick, I pushed them farther in.  One after the other I packed the rocks, finishing with a hefty mound that blocked the entrance.

 

I wiped the dust off my hands, threw my jeans and shirt into the hamper and climbed into the claw foot tub. I relaxed fairly quickly and had a smile on my face.  I had foiled the bugger. Living in the country was just not that hard and it was very satisfying.  I sighed and slipped deeper into the water.

 

The next morning all the rocks, as far as I could tell, every-single-one, had been moved from the den and back out into the sunlight.

 

Thinking on it, I decided what I really needed to do was gather a pile of rocks of various sizes and stuff the hole with them, alternating sizes as I went and thereby creating an interlocking barrier, one with smaller crevices between each stone.

 

Brilliant.  A regular contractor, I was.

 

The Pack Rat gods chuckle.

They do.

Pretty sure I hear them in my dreams.

 

Thinking on it further, I decided to buy a live trap so that I wouldn’t have to actually kill the rat that lived under my house.  I formed a brilliant plan to catch her, put her in a five gallon bucket with a lid, and release her into the National Forest.  I placed pieces of fruit and cheese in the trap, set it, and then sat down for dinner.

 

The next morning it became clear that I was buying groceries for two.

Checking the hole I found the trap empty but not sprung.

I tried again the next night with the same result.

And then again, with peanut butter because it is sticky and can’t be carried away. It would stick to the base of the trap. The trap would get sprung and the rat would be caught, alive and well and ready for transport.

I had heard that Snickers bars worked in a similar way but were less messy so I tried that next.

 

What was it that Einstein said, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results?”

 

I think I was two weeks into this Pack Rat plot (mine or hers?) when the electrical wiring which had been sealed in the earthen floor at the front of the dome near the nest, went dead.  I dug up a section of the floor and found the Romex chewed clean through.

 

Thinking on it a bit more, I  went to Gustin Hardware and bought a death trap: a big, wooden, metal thing, and set it , with a Snickers treat, outside the hole.  My new routine was to check the traps first thing in the morning. I found it 2 feet from the hole, sprung, with no chocolate.

 

Typically I avoid poison.  It is devastating for the food chain.  I love birds of prey and other, larger predators too much to sentence them to a cruel and untimely death but I could not, considering I liked solar electric lighting, afford a live-in rat.

 

I bought poison.  Yep, I did it.

GUILTY.   

But don’t worry, no one was hurt in that attempted murder.

 

NO ONE.

 

Using gloves and a trusty wooden implement I had shoved the poison, (not the whole box, that would have been overkill,) deep into the hole.  I was hoping the granules would get eaten and the diner would die inside the hole.  I was willing to deal with dead rodent smell for a few days (it does have a very distinct odor, dead rodent does) and hoped to reduce the collateral damage.

 

I needn’t have worried.

 

In the morning I sprang from my bed, threw open my shutters and flew, like a flash, to the perimeter of the dome, where, what to my wondering eyes did appear but a pile of tiny grains of poison resting just to the left of the indomitable Pack Rat’s den.

 

I gave up.

I literally gave up.

I quit.

I left the thing alone for months.

The wiring in the house had already been damaged. Teeny Little Super Rat had taken out four outlets but the rest of the electricity was intact.  I doubted, highly, that the little bugger would burrow further under the floor, content with her tunnels as she probably was. She just wanted an exit.

 

I was right.

Just that once.

 

 

One day, Bill came over and I told him that I wanted to move a huge stump away from the house because it was a barrier to working near the outside walls of the dome. 

(I had plans, big plans…we all see how that goes.) 

 

The dead tree was sitting about 15 feet off to the east of the house and I was thinking of attaching an addition to the dome,

 RIGHT THERE 👉🏻👉🏻👉🏻🌲🏠

 

The tree was in the way.  Bill, so often willing to help, was Johnny-on-the-spot that day. He hooked the partially buried stump/roots/7 foot trunk, to the back of his truck with a thick chain and eased on the gas. The bed of his ranch truck took a deep dip backwards, towards the ground, before the cab moved forward.  The suspension groaned  and dust flew from beneath the tires, but it worked.  He dragged the load twenty feet from the house before I told him to stop.

 

“I can pull it farther away, if you want,” Bill told me,  “I can drag it wherever you want it to go.”  I glanced at the gouges in the earth.

 

“This is good,” I replied, after brief consideration of his offer.  I nodded for emphasis. “Yeah, I think this is good.”  Bill peered at me over the rim of his glasses, doubtful. So I added, “I’d rather not drag it too far…, the desert, you know…  The dirt is so fragile…”  I kicked at the ground with the toe of my boot.

 

Nearly imperceptibly he raised his eyebrows. “What if you decide you want to put a garden right here?  I can pull it much farther away. This is a good place for a garden.”

 

Do you wonder where I put my garden seven years later?

Don’t.

 

Grateful for his help, I worked hard not to change the expression on my face. I was concerned about tearing up the cryptobiotic soil, a precursor to all grasses, that grows throughout my property but I didn’t want to go into detail.  

“Really, this is great.  I may use it for a yard sculpture someday.”

“There’s a guy in town that carves sculptures out of trees,” Bill turned from me, considering, and unchained the tree.

 

I never saw the Pack Rat again.

 

 Which brings me to the snake.

 

I don’t have quite the fear of snakes that some people do.  I grew up with eight brothers (this will not be the last time I tell you that, as influential on my life as it was.)  Fear was not allowed.  At least showing fear was not allowed.  In an attempt to scare me I had garter snake faces stuck into my own at least half-a-dozen times before I reached the age of eight.  We looked at pictures of snakes, touched snakes, held them, and talked about them if we hiked through snake country.  I was watchful.  I had fear.  As a little girl, I did not scream.

 

When I was an adult staying at my mom’s house one summer I found a garter snake nest teaming with hundreds of baby reptiles under old, dead tree limbs. Throwing the branches back to the ground, I screamed.

 

Decades later, Billy and Karl and Samantha and I happened on a rattlesnake den during a hike late in November in the Pinos Hills west of Mountainair. Having finished our traipse to the top of the pyramid shaped hill we headed back to the truck. I was at the head of line, just behind the dogs. When, big Diamondbacks, giants, really, over seven feet long, eight inches in diameter, coiled and hissed and readied to strike, I screamed.

 

But, I was acclimating.

 

The first snake I saw on my property was a nice sized bull snake, perhaps five feet long and six inches around. Then I saw a small racer back and later, a little garter snake.  The bull snake appeared a few more times over the years but rarely.  Later, when  Billy (not Bill.  They are different men) and I got married I moved to his house but I often went to my dome home to work on it and keep it up, keep the mice out, keep up the good fight, but no one lived there. That could be why I didn’t see many snakes, but I will argue that wasn’t the reason.  

 

One day, after a long morning stuccoing my new addition and running the generator, Jess and I stopped for lunch.  We turned off the generator, settled in our chairs, grabbed our sandwiches and admired our work (admiring work IS part of the job.) We were quite pleased. It was looking good. After one bite or two into our sandwiches I saw, out of the corner of my eye, movement in the grass. 

 

Snake.

 

I knew without seeing it.  My body knew without seeing and sent shivers up my spine.  Not in danger, not being threatened, I did not scream but slowly approached it.  

 

Diamondback.

 

Nearly the size of those we had encountered on the hiking trail, this bad boy (girl?) slowly slithered through the grass not caring she’d been seen. I closed the distance between us but gave her space and followed her towards the trees, south, away from the house.  She was impressive in her size, beautiful, really; fifteen buttons at the end of her black and white striped tail.  She was not aggressive in the least.  Having been at our feet the entire morning while Jess and I stuccoed the addition, she could have struck out at any time.

She did not.  

She was the boss. 

She had it all under control.

 

Jess and I watched her leave.

 

Two years later, after I had moved back into the dome I saw that snake one more time, lying peacefully under a tree, in the sun, bathing.  I had gone out to take clothes off the clothesline and when I turned around to head back into the house I saw her.  She did not move.  She was languishing in the sun, uncoiled, peaceful.  After the first initial, ¡SNAKE! alert sensation coursed through my body, cold blood, tightening gut, (but no scream) I approached her, not too closely, to take a good look. Black and white striped tail with fifteen buttons for a rattle; diamonds along the length of her back;  triangle head. She was so relaxed that there was nary a flick of her tongue. Gorgeous.

 

I left her alone.

She had it all under control.

 

I saw the prairie rattler the day after Pepper died. Like on the day of the hike in the Pino Hills where we encountered the rattlesnake den, it was November. This surprises a lot of people, snakes being cold blooded animals and all.  But New Mexico is one of the states where snakes can be spotted year round.  If it’s warm enough, a snake will come out of its den in the winter to catch some rays.

 

The prairie rattler was big for its kind, four feet long, and skinny.  It coiled and hissed and rattled when I stepped out the back door.  It was four feet from me and four feet from Buddy, who was resting by the side of the house, and I  took stock. Buddy saw it there in front of me but made no move to get up. He’d been bitten before, before I knew him. Good dog.

 

Having taken stock, I screamed!

 

I screamed words. They came pouring out of my mouth faster than my feet were moving. “You killed my dog you goddamn son-of-a-bitch?” I ran into the house and grabbed for a stick. The paint-roller-extender-pole and the broom were next to each other.  A brief assessment ended with the decision to grab a tool I could make REALLY long.  It extended fifteen feet, if I needed it to, for the hard-to-reach places like ceilings and roof trim (and  mean-ass snakes!) I twisted the end loose, extended it ten feet, retightened the seals and ran out the door. I aimed the pole straight at the snake.

 

I screamed again.  “You mother fucker. You killed my dog!” The snake recoiled from me, nearly jumped backwards and quickly slid behind the trash can into a small crevice at the base of a Juniper tree. I shoved the trash can aside and poked at the snake, trying to get it to move from the tree.

 

“Get the hell out of there,” I yelled, poking some more.  “You get the hell out from under that tree.”  It hissed and rattled but could not move. I had backed it into a corner. (Oh happy day??) The space where it thought it could hide was not a good one. It was too small for it to ready for a strike. I thought about killing her right then. I thought about crushing her with a rock. Or, cutting her head off with a shovel. I didn’t. Another poke got her moving and, from the end of my trusty paint-roller-extender, I followed it.  Ms. Murderous snake tried to bury herself in the pile of sand. I had none of it.  I poked again.  “The hell you will,” I screamed.  “Get the hell out of here.  You can’t live here!” The snake began moving rapidly, trying to escape it’s rabid pursuer.  I grabbed a bucket. With the end of the pole I worked to pick her up.

To capture her.

To put her in the bucket and move her off.  

 

My heart beat wildly in my chest.

After several attempts at draping her on the end of the pole by sliding it under her firm muscular body, I finally succeeded.   Keeping her as far from me as the pole would allow I dropped her into the bucket. Then, lifted the bucket, heavy with snake, and began walking very quickly down the driveway.  Precariously the bucket hung, geeing and hawing, like a donkey,swinging back and forth, as the snake slithered inside. The tip of the pole where the paint roller screws on bowed with her weight. But I kept her as far away from me as I could without losing her, as far as gravity and friction would allow. 

All the while I was watching me; outside my body I was watching the snake charmer, fighting the good fight.

 

“How far off do I move her,” I wondered?  With no lid for the bucket I couldn’t safely put her in the truck and drive off.  

I kept walking.  

“Am I going far enough?

Far enough to guarantee she wouldn’t return?” I wondered.

 

The feisty girl continued to rattle and hiss.

I did, too. “You goddamn son-of-a-bitch snake, killing my dog!  If you ever, EVER come back here I will KILL you.  I will KILL you.  Do you hear me?  You are getting away easy this time.  I get that you were here first but we are here now.  This is MY home now.

You don’t get to be here! Stay away from my dogs!”

 

I set down the bucket. With the end of the pole, I tipped it over. She exited quickly. And, totally quiet, vanquished, she  slithered, away from me, her captor, hunter, murderous bitch. I had ever seen a snake move so fast.

 

What drove me to act the way I did, besides my anger, besides my fear, besides my grief, were the stories I’d heard about snakes.  All of my neighbors have snakes on their properties. It’s a regular topic of conversation.  Either they or their pets have been variously bitten and barely survived. Some people kill the snakes and some practice capture and release.  But snakes are territorial.  If you move them too far away from their home they don’t have a good chance of survival.  On the other hand, if you don’t move them far enough, about ten miles I have read, they are likely to return. Was there really a win-win? And how would I ever know?  She had lived here first probably for many years. Did my presence suddenly mean her demise?

 

AND, I hate killing things, even if it’s a clean kill.  I am terrible at it, terrible at the guilt that follows.  

 

If you are a black widow hanging out in my house or in my shed, I will kill you.  With remorse, with words of apology, I will squish you dead.  

 

Same goes if you are a centipede (ugh) inside my house.  Outside, you are free but inside, your feathery little legs and squirmy body are fair game. No regrets.  Mostly no regrets.

 

If you are a mouse inside my house I will try to kill you, always and always with regret.  You can live outside if Buddy doesn’t catch you but I myself will not attempt eradication.  

 

If you are a common spider but live inside, I will catch you and put you outside.  A miller moth?  I’ll move you outside.  A fly?  If you bug me enough I’ll swat you dead but mostly you get to live. 

 

If you are a lizard stuck in some of my hardware cloth I will release you.  

 

If you are an orphaned rabbit I will bring you to the wildlife sanctuary in Albuquerque (much to their chagrin.) 

 

If you are a snake who killed my dog but lives outside, you get a second chance.  

 

I didn’t say it makes sense.  

On my property, I am The Goddess of All,  she that decides, from moment to moment, who lives or who dies.  

 

Wow! Suddenly the whole world is starting to make sense. We all just want to survive and we each decide with whom we do it.

🎵🎵🎶Bears do it.  Lions do it.  When you think about it, ants do it, that’s the glory of, that’s the story of life.🎶🎶🎵 

 

So, Silke, all that is to say that I have not seen that prairie rattler, nor any other rattler since.  I have seen a bull snake in the east field, far from the house, once but that’s all.  Is it possible that, given snakes are territorial, I scared the wits out of her and she decided to defer to me, Queen of All That I Survery?

 

Living in the country is sublime.

I’ve got it all under control.

Side view of my reinforced hoop garden.

View of my garden looking North.  Tree that Bill moved is in the photo to the right.

‘

The plants I seem intent on saving at all costs.

Front view of the addition to my dome.  It faces south.

Great solar gain!

View of the addition that Jess, the local, licensed Contractor and I built.  This is the side from which

we saw Queen Diamondback.

Three views of different Pack Rat nests that can be found near my house.  The top and bottom photos are new nests this year.  The top one shows that the rat is decimating the cholla cactus at the base of which she chose to build her nest.  The middle photo is an image of an older, more lived in nest at the base of a Juniper Tree. The bottom photo depicts a newly begun nest under the cement slab of my pump house.

She’s taking advantage of a rabbit den. 🤬🤬🤬