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snakes and canine curiosity
Tuesday, April 17 2012
Back in February I'd seen a Ring-necked Snake in the driveway; it had been a warm February but hadn't contained a single day where one might expect to see a snake. Evidently something had caused this snake to slither out of the nearby stone retaining wall despite his normal inclinations to stay there. Perhaps it had been the five gallon bucket of urine I'd dumped on the nearby garden.
Snakes don't usually start turning up until about this time of year, and so today I was not surprised to see my first non-freaky snake of the season, a Garter Snake near the southmost tomato patch. Some hours later I saw Ramona barking at the leaves between the woodshed and farm road, and when I ran to see what it was it turned out to be another Garter Snake, perhaps the first snake Ramona had ever seen. (The normal reaction of the other dogs is indifference or fear; I've seen Eleanor react in terror to the impassive nonchalance of especially snake-like roots.) I've never known a dog as perpetually curious as Ramona. If I pick something up, she won't stop following me until I let her sniff it, with a few to allowing her to take it away in her mouth. And though her normal inclination is to quickly destroy anything that she can potentially carry, sometimes fear gets in the way (as was the case today with a small remote-controlled robot I raced around in the dining room). I have a feeling, though, that this could easily end up being an expensive porcupine season.
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