Just as the serpent was the spoiler in Eden, the serpent is the spoiler here in Paradise. A couple of days ago when Dennis was doing evening chores, he found all the little chickens standing in a circle. All of them were peering intently at a fallen comrade. The little red chicken lying dead in their midst was intact except for missing feathers on its neck. Its head and neck were wet. At first he wondered if it had somehow drowned, but that was impossible. He decided to take a careful look around the little chickens' quarters.
Behind a bale of straw he found the culprit, a black rat snake almost five feet long. The serpent had tried but failed to swallow the chicken. Even though snakes can unhinge their jaws in order to swallow prey, this chicken was too big to go down the hatch.
Black rat snakes are common in Kansas and are considered beneficial because their primary diet consists of mice, rats and other rodents. Unfortunately, they also eat birds' eggs and babies. They can climb high into trees to rob birds' nests.
We often find a black snake in the hens' nest eating eggs. Dennis just picks the snake up with a pitchfork and tosses it into the pasture. Once, last summer, he tossed the same snake out three times before it gave up trying. Never before has a black snake killed one of our little chickens. This one went too far. Dennis was outraged and dispatched it using a crowbar.
Black snakes are territorial so we thought the problem was solved. We didn't know that this is the snakes' mating season, which means that where there's one there may be two.
Last evening Dennis went to tend the little chickens and found most of them crowded into a corner while in the middle of the floor a black snake was in the act of trying to swallow a little red chicken. The crowbar was at hand. This time I caught the aftermath in a photo.
We grieve for the little lost chickens, but we've learned something from the experience. We know that snakes come out of hibernation hungry and horny. We know that even after 35 years in Paradise we still have more to learn. We're reminded once again that no place on earth is perfect, that a serpent always lurks in Paradise.
Behind a bale of straw he found the culprit, a black rat snake almost five feet long. The serpent had tried but failed to swallow the chicken. Even though snakes can unhinge their jaws in order to swallow prey, this chicken was too big to go down the hatch.
Black rat snakes are common in Kansas and are considered beneficial because their primary diet consists of mice, rats and other rodents. Unfortunately, they also eat birds' eggs and babies. They can climb high into trees to rob birds' nests.
We often find a black snake in the hens' nest eating eggs. Dennis just picks the snake up with a pitchfork and tosses it into the pasture. Once, last summer, he tossed the same snake out three times before it gave up trying. Never before has a black snake killed one of our little chickens. This one went too far. Dennis was outraged and dispatched it using a crowbar.
Black snakes are territorial so we thought the problem was solved. We didn't know that this is the snakes' mating season, which means that where there's one there may be two.
Last evening Dennis went to tend the little chickens and found most of them crowded into a corner while in the middle of the floor a black snake was in the act of trying to swallow a little red chicken. The crowbar was at hand. This time I caught the aftermath in a photo.
We grieve for the little lost chickens, but we've learned something from the experience. We know that snakes come out of hibernation hungry and horny. We know that even after 35 years in Paradise we still have more to learn. We're reminded once again that no place on earth is perfect, that a serpent always lurks in Paradise.
1 comment:
Dennis looks appropriately glum...
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