There are snakes in the grass, here. We know it. The dogs know it. The birds know it.
1. On the patio
I came home the other day, arriving before the fair and industrious Trudy which fact consequently bestowed upon me the task of server of dinner kibble.
This is usually the gist of the evening greeting: circling us at the door with wagging tails, jumping up and down and then dashing directively into the kitchen for the obviously most important part of the ritual. But this day was different. Instead of the dash to the kitchen, there was a dash outside.
Ok, there is often a dash outside, but I’m taking some artistic license, here…
So as I stepped onto our patio, a garden snake slithered across the concrete and into the leaves at the base of the Rose-of-Sharon. Guinness looked at me and then pranced over to that spot. He stepped into the leaves, gingerly choosing his steps, sniffing at the Wild Garlic and Heart Leaf Scullcap, looking up at me periodically.
“Yes,” I said. “I know. It’s in there somewhere.”
2. By the pond
With the great pergola project of 2014 complete, we were loathe to put the cattle-tank-cum-pond back on the patio. With all that wonderful cedar towering over us and filling the air with wonderful smells, we thought we’d like to enjoy the full patio rather than putting the pond on it.
So we dug in the dirt and we created a place filled with gravel and lined with sandstone blocks where we could set the pond. Just beyond the edge of the patio, nestled amidst the Blue Mist Flower and pink flowering Penstemon and red-blossomed Texas Betony, the pond is now full of water and a few pond plants and a modest bubbling fountain in the middle.
And the dogs know that the snakes know that there is water there. In the morning after a night-long absence of canines in the back yard, there is evidently evidence of them. For even as we speak, the dogs are sniffing and circling around the cattle tank, notifying Trudy of the intrusion.
3. On the chair
And in the front yard, a Blue Jay chick has fallen from its nest.
Maybe it fell from the Ash. Maybe from one of the Oaks. But wherever it fell from, it knows better than to sit helplessly on the ground by the greenery and blooming springtime flowers. It has somehow managed to hop or fly or clambor up the back of a rickety wooden chair, to the very highest part of the back of the chair.
Short of getting back into its nest, there is no safer place it could possibly be. And as I sit here looking out the window, it sits there safely high off the ground, wide-eyed, watching and waiting.
Because even though we have taken out the grass in the front, you know there are snakes over there. And the baby Blue Jay knows it, too.