Summer Visitors - 2009

Summer 2009 has been marked by a few notable things. One of them is that it rained for most of the month of June (something like 25 days with rain.....yea!), and the first part of July. Luckily it stopped raining right when the boys went to Scout Camp. In addition to the rain, the spring/summer of 2009 was also a great time for summer visitors. Now, we have had some of these visitors before, but for others it was their first stop, at least as far as we know. The previous post was all about Mr. Turkey, whose family members still regularly stop by. But, we have also had some other visitors.

So with the rain, comes lots of pools and ponds, which are great places for frogs. Frogs galore this spring and summer, like this guy staring right at you.



What? You say you can't see him? Well, he is there, I assure you. Take a closer look and you will see your Prince Charming gazing at you with those hunky eyes!



Here's a smaller version of Mr. Frog, this one a tree frog. Yes, I thought it was just a brown spot in the center of my rose when I first saw it as well. But a closer look showed it to be a cute little tree frog. This little guy really liked that spot. I found him in between the rose petals several times. I have only seen him once since the rose bloomed, but more buds are on the way!






So the frogs are normal summer visitors, as are their reptilian cousins. However, we had a real treat this May with the visit of a type of snake that I had never before seen. We usually see many, many garter snakes, and I try to catch most of them that I find. However, one evening, just at dusk, I was walking by my front flower bed and noticed a really long, thin pattern against my foundation that I had never seen. My heart jumped as I realized it was a snake! With the boys help, we cornered it so that it could not slip away, and I laid my hands on it.......with some leather to protect me in case it was some biting variety (not common in ME, but one never wants to make the news as "the first snake bite death in Maine in over 100 years took place today in Gorham"). What a beaut this snake was! Just look at the beautiful patterning.



Not knowing the variety of snake, I contacted the local Herpetological Society (the "Snake" experts......no worries, I had never heard the word before I googled it either). I had tried matching the pattern to pictures on the web, and narrowed it down to either a corn snake, or a milk snake, or possibly a sneaky snake, which made me want to hide all of our rootbeer (inside joke for all you Tom T. Hall fans). As it turns, it was an Eastern Milk Snake.



After shaking hands with this beautiful neighborhood snake, and measuring it at 32 inches, we let it go. The funny part of the story is that just a little over a week later, I about stepped on this very same snake (or at least its sibling with the exact same length) in my back flower bed. I figured it wanted to shake hands again, so once again I grabbed it, but this time I put it in a bin in the garage for a sleepover. We had church first thing in the morning, so I left it with some water, and a rock to hide under in the bin. After waking it with a big kiss in the morning, and looking it over after church, it decided it had had enough of this visit, so kindly figured its way out of the container in my garage. The door was open, so I am guessing it found its way out. If not, it may still be living in my garage, which is fine by me!