Uh, yeah that's a snake

So I grew up in the country surrounded by woods, and we had snakes. I never really got used to that. I live a little less in the country now, in a spot that is being surrounded by development. Little by little, the natural habitat of the animals that live around us is being taken away.

We've always allowed our property to grow as wild as possible, first for privacy and second for wildlife. We've encountered opposum, ground hogs, raccoon, deer, squirrels, chipmunks, a weasel, (possibly) a black bear and many, many species of birds. But until this summer we had never seen a snake.

I guess it was only a matter of time.

I didn't see or get a shot of the bigger garter snake we had had on our property earlier this summer, but I'm thinking that one might have been a mom. The one I did see and get shots of was just a little guy, sunning himself on the concrete around our outdoor building. He let me take the close-up above which makes him look bigger than he really was. The photo below gives a better comparison. He was only about as big around as a pencil.

And, as was tradition when I was growing up, his name is Charlie.

Bear scat?

I'm thinking this wasn't the neighbor's cat.

We found two similar piles within a few yards of each other in our front yard. The second one was close to a line of empty (except for the leftover dirt) potted plant containers which were lined up along a wall of our small outdoor building. A couple of the containers had been tipped over, and one was broken in half.

I know, I know, this probably isn't what you typically expect to see on a blog, but we weren't sure what neighbor left this for us. We've done some research, and we're thinking black bear. We checked around the property and didn't find any kind of territory markings on the trees, but we've found bark scraped off before. We're thinking he was looking for grubs behind the pots.

The bright circle toward the bottom center is a quarter I put in for size comparison. I think the droppings are pretty impressive, no matter what left them.

And now that I think about it, I haven't seen the neighbor's cat around lately.

Snow @ twilight

Our first-ish snow of the season of any consequence.