Creature Shenanigans, Part One

My yard is full of creatures. It always has been, and probably always will be.
It's almost like a zoo, except there are no cages, and you generally aren't sleeping inside of the zoo when the animals start screeching in outrageous ways and terrifying you to death.

I have quite a few of stories involving backyard creatures and their crazy shenanigans, so every once in awhile you'll see one of them. Be prepared.

You see, my backyard backs up to a park. Which is awesome, to say the least.
Here, let me show you:
Yeah. Its pretty rad. I mean, to get to the park you need to hack through about 10 to 20 feet of thorny and terrible bushes and trees and skunk/hobo nests, but the park is literally RIGHT THERE.

This is actually a google maps satellite image. We planted big white flowers that spell out YARD, and bushes, and PARK IS THIS WAY, along with assorted arrows. Oh, and our roofs are flat and white and label our house/garage. I'm surprised I had to explain that, as it seems so obviously real and satellite-y.

Anyway, because our yard backs up to the park, with all kinds of bushes and trees right there and such (there are also several trees in our yard, a storage shed, a swingset that my dad built himself because he's amazing and a half, and about a million other things that i forgot to draw in...i mean that google forgot to draw in...with their satellite imagery), and that combination leads to a LOT of wildlife.

It doesn't help that in said park there is a big, grassy hill and a little creek that leads to a swamp-like contraption that's nestled among the trees.
another picture?
yes.
another picture indeed:
All of the green dots and things are bushes and trees and hobo-living quarters. or at least they used to be.
There used to be a LOT of trees along to the left there, it was a fairly decent little forested area. Except the village decided to cut half of it down for no reason.

Well...the reason was probably the homeless people and the pot and the alcohol that was consumed back there...the pot and the alcohol were consumed. not the homeless people....unless they were consumed with rage at being homeless. or consumed with hope because they lived by such pretty trees.
I'll write a post about the homeless people later. because they were interesting. All two of them that I saw were interesting ones, anyway.

So because of that little creek (those dots in the creek are cattails by the way, which are REALLY fun to light on fire if you let them dry out enough. They smelled cool and kept the insects away at night) and all of those trees, wildlife flocks to our little corner of the world. seriously. animals are fucking EVERYWHERE.

I guess first I should tell you about the snakes, because the snakes are first chronologically in the list of fun animal stories to tell, so it makes sense to start there....though I suppose the bee incident was first, since I was about 4 when that happened, and I was about 7 or 8 when the snakes happened. The bee incident is a story for another time though. You'll get it, don't worry.

ANYWAY. so the snakes.

There was a period of time, about 3 or 4 years I think, when every summer snakes would come and nest in our backyard. Things always nest in my backyard because I think they can sense that we like animals and generally will leave them alone as much as we can, as long as they don't actively bother us.

Around June or July, I would be running around outside with my imaginary friends making "chocolate soup" (now with more poison berries and woodchips! made with fresh mud and water daily!) and all of a sudden I would see something in the grass. I would approach it and pick it up and run to my dad yelling "THE SNAKES ARE BACK!!!"

I loved the snakes.

My mom was terrified of them. So was my sister, who I think was in middle school at this time. Maybe freshman year of high school. something like that.

So, every year, the snakes would come and make nests under our screen house (this little gazebo type thing that sits in the middle of our yard and is actually pretty sweet. it keeps the bugs out, so I'm happy) and leave their skin everywhere. I think my dad would have preferred to just leave them alone to eat whatever mice and bugs they could find (because clearly these are things we REALLY do not want. things worse than snakes. things we have quite a few of, actually). But after awhile they would continue to terrify my mom and my sister (and sometimes me, if I was too close to it when it slithered out) and so my dad would go about catching them.

I honestly have no recollection of him catching them. I think he used some sort of tongs or something to pick them up, then he would quickly put them in this old, huge bucket we had. After he caught them all (there were normally about 2 or 3), he would cover the bucket with old pieces of screen. I don't really know what this accomplished, seeing as how these were garter snakes, and garter snakes are barely poisonous at all, at least for humans. They're about as venomous as a mosquito, pretty much. They don't have fangs or anything to really deliver venom with so they're pretty safe for humans.

(note: this is not a picture of any of the snakes we found. this is a picture of a garter snake that I found online. © Dave Ingram)

I sort of wish we had kept them, or at least one. Though then I would feel bad because I was seperating friends or lovers or family, so I probably wouldn't have been able to keep just one. But I do think it would be AWESOME having a snake as a pet. My friend Nella has one, or she did before she went to college and then she had to have a family friend take care of him for her. Basically snakes are really, really cool when they're not going to try and crush you to death and/or inject you with poison.

So these snakes would be in a bucket with screen over it, and they'd be really, really upset. Some dude just grabs you off the sidewalk with big metal tongs, dumps you in a bucket with two friends and then prevents your escape/revenge? what an asshole!

Now enter little 7-year-old me, with a head full of curiosity and a heart full of daring (hah. that's a lie. I've always been scared of everything. This was really no exception, I was just too fascinated to freak out). I couldn't stop staring at the snakes in the bucket. I didn't want to look away because my dad was going to take them away soon to set them free in some nice snake-friendly habitat and I might never be that close to snakes ever again.

As I'm standing there, staring in open-mouthed awe, my sister comes over and throws sand on them through the screen.

I don't know if it was to get back at them for being scary jerks, or if it was because she was bored and curious and wanted to see them do something other than sit there in agony. But she took a handful of sand from my sandbox nearby, brought it to the bucket and threw it through the screen at the poor, unsuspecting snakes below.

I should have stood up for those little guys.

But I didn't.

They FREAKED OUT when the sand fell on them. It went from a fun little tea-time with snakey to a full-on cage match. They threw themselves at the walls, at each other, spun around, opened their mouths, hissed, the works.
And while this seems cruel now in hindsight, I was completely and utterly batshit over watching these snakes move, and I had found an easy way to make them move.

I imagined I was making them dance for me, or that they just moved like that sometimes. In reality they were probably just really fucking pissed off that someone had covered them in sand, which they now had to roll around in and sit in and be in pain because of, and I probably should have stopped.

Buuuuut I didn't. Go ahead, call me terrible and evil. I am...but I won't lie and say that throwing sand on those snakes wasn't a blast.

Anyway, pretty soon my dad saw me do it and my parents got really upset and asked me how I would feel if someone threw sand at me while I was imprisoned and I probably apologized because I didn't want to be in trouble, even though in my head I was thinking, "Well, I probably would have danced like that, except with legs and arms and stuff. I'd probably be a pretty good sand-dancer."

note: I would not be a good sand dancer.

So, then my dad would take the bucket away, walk down to the park behind my house, and let the snakes go.
Normally they would wait a year and then come nest in our backyard all over again. Apparently they had such a nice vacation the year before they felt the need to come back and relive it.

Into the bucket they went. Then to the park, and then set free.

And then they'd come back.

Snakes are retarded, just in case you weren't previously aware. They did this for several years, even though every time they came back, nothing changed. They would show up for two years in a row, get put in a bucket, released into the park, come back, repeat. Then sometimes they'd go away for a year or two before coming back for two more years in a row. So just when we think they're gone, WHOOPS there they are again.

Finally we figured out that it was partially our fault, because we kept releasing them in the same park which was right behind our house, leaving them an easy avenue to come back the next year.

So the last time the snakes came, we put them in the bucket, covered it with screen (I wasn't mean to them this time, I had matured to the age of 8, when clearly I knew everything there was to ever know about anything, and I was above throwing sand on the snakes...also I knew I would get in trouble if I did it again), and drove the bucket-o-snakes over to a park that was pretty far away and set them free again.

The snakes haven't been back since.

Part of me misses them, because when they were around it was like an adventure going into my backyard.

But even if they did come back, I probably wouldn't go in my backyard to begin with because I would be too busy cowering in fear in my room, peeking out at the world through my window.

One of these days I'll have to explain why I'm terrified of practically everything.

OH. ONE MORE THING.
I got the coolest daily planner EVER. Except the dates don't start until the last week of July, so I have to wait until the 26th to start using it. Which is 10 whole days. Which is unacceptable.
Its got a map and a periodic table and how to convert measurements and temperature and common formulas and a multiplication table!
Basically the best thing ever.

SEE. PERIODIC TABLE.

Also, I love the camera program on my lappy. I gave myself a mustache, and surrounded myself with stars and hearts and rainbows (almost typed drainbows. those sound terrible) and the cutest grim reaper ever.

Seriously. if that little guy came to signal my death, I wouldn't be that upset. He's adorable. I would be too busy cooing to realize that I'm not living anymore. Plus he's under a rainbow. That makes him cuter.

Like I said, BEST. PLANNER. EVAR.

Anyway, time to go. I just took a shower and I need to dry my hair (this is why its up in a towel-turban right now. just FYI). Bye!