Not for the squeamish

Nor for those who have an irrational fear of snakes, or for that matter an irrational love of cute little bunny rabbits. But for those who are intrigued by the natural world and don't get too freaked out by the ickier bits of it, this was our David Attenborough moment.

John and Kristal's dog Boudin spotted it first, and went bounding up before the rest of us had a chance to register any more than some kind of mound on the path. It was so interesting he resisted all Kristal's attempts to call him away for a while. Even though she quickly identified it as a non-poisonous black snake, and besides, its mouth was far too full of rabbit to bite anything else, we were glad when he was safely to heel.

We stood and watched for a few minutes. The rabbit was clearly dead; whether the snake killed it or just found it, we don't know. It was eating in a leisurely fashion, which I suppose is fair enough when your dinner is actually wider than your body. Every few moments it would open its jaws a little and inch its way a tiny bit further up the rabbit. By the look of it, it was going to be there most of the day.

We kept on walking, but felt honoured to have seen something that many people only watch on nature programs. And it fulfilled Graham's dream of seeing a really big snake in the wild - albeit in Virginia not in Texas!

Comments

Sally said…

Awesome - I'm so jealous!

2 August 2011 at 13:58

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions. The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?" This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them. Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone. That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of. Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died. And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was. His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...

Growing things

For those of you who are interested in my attempts at balcony gardening, I thought I'd update you a little. For those who aren't, don't skip this post. You may find something else of interest. Apart from the ever-present herbs, tomatoes and cayenne peppers are on the go this year. The peppers are really on the go - we went away for a week and came back to find them twice the size as when we left. Now they're producing fruit which is growing at a similarly rapid rate, though none has ripened to red yet. I realised I should have given you some kind of scale, so I just went out and measured. They're about 22 cm long, or 8 1/2 inches for you non-metric types. I may have to find out how to dry peppers if they all ripen at once. A couple of tomato plants are looking pretty healthy and beginning to flower. A few died; one, apparently, by being eaten whole by a bird, a trouble I've never had before. I had two seedlings left so used those as replacements, b...

Back on the Portway: Smalley and Morley

I didn't by any means feel I had fully explored the Erewash Valley, but I had completed my planned routes and got some idea of the transport, industry, and general geography of the area. It was time to return to the Portway. There are lots of -leys around here. Smalley, Morley, Mapperley, Stanley, Horsley. The suffix means "woodland clearing", and although there are not many woods around any more, it doesn't take much imagination to think of little villages among the trees. I started in Dale Abbey (or should that be Daley Abbley?) where the monastery once dominated the surrounding area. I've been to Dale Abbey several times but never actually walked through the village before. There is a neatly trimmed pub, an old chapel, now a church known as The Gateway, and a house with an odd lumpy corner which I realised must be part of the ruined abbey. A field path led me up to the main Derby-Ilkeston road. I crossed it and followed a couple of horses along a single-track l...

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Search This Blog