First Snake of the Year

We "found" our first snake of the year the other day. Hailey was doing her usual chores of feeding the horses and chickens. When she went to collect the chicken eggs, she felt something "scaley" in the nest box. She immediately withdrew her hand and SCREAMED! Hayden and I ran over to find out what had happened. There in one of the nest boxes for the chickens was this snake. He had enjoyed a delightful meal of chicken eggs. Hayden promptly went and got a pair of gloves and proceeded to collect the snake. We put it in a bucket until morning.

Here is a picture of Tim and Harrison examining the snake. We usually don't kill the snakes we find at our place. They are simply "relocated" to another place to keep the rat population down. This is a rat snake. However, rat snakes enjoy chicken eggs, too, so we don't like them around our place for that reason.

Harrison was brave and even held the snake by it's head. Something mom doesn't like doing AT ALL. It's part of life in the country. I'm just thankful this is the only snake we've seen thus far this year. Let's hope it's the last!