It was a pretty quiet Memorial Day weekend, except for Saturday night, when I heard a commotion in my sunroom, home of my Spanish Timbrado canaries. Intrigued, I came downstairs and turned on the light and was taken aback to see my orange tiger cat, Neil, proudly keeping watch over a coiled pile of a snake--a pretty long snake at that!
Horrified, I could see that Neil had apparently been playing with the then-unidentified snake, which seemed woozy and unhappy to be the object of the cat's attention.
I hurriedly scooped the snake onto a magazine and brought it out so that it could sidle into the bushes.
I have no idea how the snake got into my home, but I thought it would be interesting to find out what kind of snake it was. I was delighted to find a fabulous online resource on Snakes of Massachusetts, compiled by U. Mass Amherst. It offers a species-by-species guide to the snakes found here in the Commonwealth, and I was able to identify my visitor as an Eastern Ribbon Snake, a harmless snake that frequents ponds and wetlands, like those in my backyard.
No comments:
Post a Comment