Snake in the nest box
Monday Jun 04, 2007
Previously I talked about the four hens who live in our back yard. The oldest hen, Shiner Bock, has been giving us eggs for a few weeks now. We're expecting the other hens to start laying soon, so we check the nest boxes a few times every day.
Yesterday, I opened the lid of the two nest boxes, where we have nesting material and some golf balls and a plastic hollow Easter egg, so the hens get the idea that this is a good place to lay eggs. Much to my surprise, I saw a snake with its jaws wrapped around the plastic Easter egg. At first I thought one of my boys was messing with me, as they have lots of rubber and plastic snakes that they play with. As my wife Karen has said many times, one of these days she's going to pick up what she thinks is a rubber snake and have a nasty surprise. But anyway, I saw the snake's tail wiggle a bit, so I quickly closed the lid and called Karen over. Hey, they're her chickens, maybe she's heard of some great method to get rid of snakes. And maybe I'm a wimp :).
Karen opened the lid, and banged on the box a few times with a board, and the snake eventually slithered out of the coop and into the garden. He was about 3-4 feet long, and according to our reptile book, he was probably a rat snake.
So now we have a couple things to think about. First, how many other eggs has this snake gotten? Second, how to we keep him out, other than hope he'll succeed in swallowing a plastic egg or golf ball and die? We can also hope the chickens will catch him in the coop or run and kill him, and get a good meal too!
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