SquirrelyMan!

About 4 weeks ago we became parents yet again! You'd think we were tired of boys, but no, not in this household. We didn't plan on adopting, but he kind of dropped in our laps and after taking one look at him we just couldn't say no. Rayne actually found him lying there helpless without a mother and when she showed up with this poor baby in her arms, we just couldn't say no.

How could you pass up a little boy that looks so cute as this?

This was taken when he was about 4 weeks old. When Rayne brought him home, he was still pink and no fur on him! Without having a clue on what to do, we knew to go to the internet! There we found The Squirrel Board and with their help we gave him warmth, food and shelter (well Priority Boxes do make for good shelter!). Since then, what we thought impossible has happened! He has flourished and grown. When he turned 5 weeks he opened his eyes and found that his mommies looked a little different from him, but he doesn't seem to mind. He's gotten used to the noise in our house, but we're hoping that doesn't affect him when we release him at 12 weeks.

He's now 6 1/2 weeks and is learning the enjoyment of tomatoes!

He's now too big for his Priority Mail box and has been upgraded to a high rise cage! It has tons of amenities and as Rayne puts it, if she were a squirrel, she would love to live in it!! He has a cozy log home with his fur bed and a couple of small fuzzy stuffed animals, one of which the pet store thinks looks like a squirrel. He has ladders to climb, wooden sticks and ropes to hang off of and wood perches that we got from our own yard! Although he likes to play, for now he seems quite content to still curl up on his fur rug and sleep like most young uns do after eating.

So while we do have our run-ins with snakes and rats, every once in awhile we have fun animals out here too!

Ding Dong the Snake is DEAD!!!

Rats, chickens, dogs, what else? Well, those who know me have heard the story of Cocoa and the snake!! Seems a couple of months ago a snake with about a 1" fang span decided it wanted to have my dog for lunch!! Of course, me, not even thinking snake bite, thought he had gotten stung by a bee!! The poor dog all day had his little paw swollen until he looked like he was going to be a big dog when he grew up!! It wasn't until that evening when he rolled over and his entire leg and chest had gone black that we realized it was a snake bite and not a bee sting! Luckily, Cocoa survived as I had been giving him Benadryl all day and then all the "happy" drugs that the emergency vet gave him! A couple of weeks ago, Tom went around my soap shack and found two snake skins. The first one was slightly bigger than the other and both were longer than I am tall!! I know, not hard to do!

I had thrown down some ceramic eggs thinking that maybe I could trick that ole snake into eating them and killing it. But every day that I looked, those eggs were still there.

I was just thinking the other day that maybe that snake had moved on. The chickens don't really come around here anymore and our rat problem has gone away, so there isn't really a food supply for it.

So, this afternoon as I was heading happily to the soap shack, I had just called Tom on the cell phone and right when he picked it up, the only sound he heard was me whispering.......SNAKE! There on the path, right in front of me was a big snake! It looked about 3 feet long. Tom said, go grab the shovel and chop off it's head! Well, I would but the shovel was in the barn, meaning that I would have to step over the snake to get to the barn. Laughingly, I asked if I could go get the rifle! Heck, I think I did a good job on that rat!! But, Tom said no!! :) I walked slowly towards the snake as it stared at me and made a long arc around the back of it. As I passed it to head towards the barn to get the shovel the snake slithered into a crack in the wall of our well shed. I grabbed the shovel anyway and placed it by the tree cause I wasn't going into the well shed! No telling where that snake was.

When Tom came home this evening he wasn't in the house. Seems he was out in the well shed hunting snakes! He said he opened the door and the snake was under and old desk we had in there. He tried to get it with the shovel, but it was cowering back in the back. He thought he got part of it. After several tries, he grabbed the rifle! At that point, Rayne wanted to watch!! I was in the house but after hearing three gunshots, I went outside! I don't know what it is with several shots and trying to kill varmints, but it just seems one doesn't do it in this household!

When I got to the well shed, Tom had pulled part of the wood out and you see the snake trying to snap at somebody!! Tom had hit it in the middle. We got it pulled out of the shed where it finally died. Apparently, my sense of measurement is quite wrong. After getting the measuring tape out, this guy was a full 5ft 6inches long! A lot bigger than me!!

But now the nasty, dog eating, chicken snake is dead!! Whoo hoo!!! Our yard is safe again. Till next time!! :)