The snake in the well...

Can you see the snake on the right hand side?

So there is this well in our back yard and my husband and the kids think it's cool.  There are interesting things in there like frogs and snakes.

It makes me a little crazy because as you know things can fall into a well.  Things like children and cats.  Important things like that.

This well is about five feet deep.  The water is usually at the half way point - about three feet, but sometimes after heavy rains it can be up to the top.

I tried to convince my husband to fill it with rocks or dirt or cement, but he refuses because he likes it.  He thinks it is neat.  I tried to talk him into covering it with a big metal grate (where can I find one?).  He has plans to build some stone thing around it (mind you not immediate plans).  I found a large wooden wishing well at the MillStore that we can stick over it.  I just need to steal his truck and some strong people to heft it through the overgrown briars and cover that hole!

Anyway, I digress, the point actually was to show you the snake.  If you look in the far right corner you can see a garter snake half in the wall with his head resting on the log.  The problem was that he was there for three days in a row.  I poked him with a stick  (yes I am very brave) and he didn't try to get away.  I concluded that he must be stuck.

A few down the well.

So I waited for my husband to come home.  He is after all the snake expert in the family and doesn't seem to mind touching them.  This by the way is not the same snake that was living in our kitchen.  That was a milk snake and this is a garter snake.  Unfortunately, I can now tell the difference.

So Tristan comes home and he checks out the situation.  He said that snakes "don't get stuck" and that he was sure he could get out of there.  He poked it with a stick too with the same results (jeesh I DID that...)  He opted to leave it alone and didn't do anything.  I told him to stick his hand in there and see if he could loosen it or push it down.  He didn't do it.  I offered to get him vaseline so he could grease up the snake.  He thought I was crazy.

Man investigates snake

So the next day I went to work - I actually work twice that day so there is not a lot of time at home to play with snakes.  When I got home finally around 11:30p.m.  he had a confession for me.  He told me that the snake was still there and that he decided it was stuck (!).  He tried to pull it out (I really really wish I could have been there to video it - I find it highly suspicious that he avoided me and my camera.  huh!)  and got it out, but it's tail was a bit mangled and it had a cut on it's belly and did not survive the rescue.  I am pretty sure that it had been stuck since the weekend so it was probably pretty weak as well. 

So I guess you can add a snake to our death toll of one squirrel and many, many mice.  We now have a snake free well.  The snakes do come back though to eat the frogs so I am sure there will be more.  Hopefully the others will be smarter and not get themselves stuck in the wall.