Don't hurt it!

So just a bit ago, I was in the back yard, taking down a hummingbird feeder so I could change out the sugar water. A black car drove by. The driver stopped, backed up slowly and peered at our house. What's up, I thought to myself. When the driver stepped out, I hollered, "Everything OK?" He glanced at me, then walked over to the flower bed and squatted down.

"Yeah," he hollered back. "I just saw a snake! It went in here."

"Oh, GOOD!" I responded, excitedly. "We LIKE snakes! Don't hurt it!"

"I won't!" he said.

I hurried to the front yard, where the young man still squatted, peering into the rock border. "It went in there," he said, pointing. I peered, too, but neither of us saw anything.

"I bet it's one of our rat snakes," I told him. He nodded.

"It was BIG. It was crossing the street, and I nearly ran over it," he said. "Then it crawled into your yard and into those rocks."

Then he told me about a big python that belongs to his girlfriend. I said I doubted it was native, right? No, not a native, he said. Did he know where it naturally ranges? He looked a little confused and shook his head. I suggested that they might out. Then I briefly shared about our Wildscape, how we plant natives, and that a neighbor once brought us a hognose snake, which we released in the Meadow. I'm not sure how much he cared about anything I told him, but I did my part!

And he did his....by respecting our rat snake. He even admired it!