Snake Savior

 

My wife Mary had to work late last evening, so I went to the supermarket for the week's groceries. (I do all the cooking.)  As I was carrying the bags from the car to the house, I looked down and saw a fairly sizable Eastern Garter Snake alongside the path; in fact, I nearly stepped on it.  Odd...

The path is bordered by a 1-1/2-foot tall wire mesh fence that the previous resident of the house had installed.  It's been there ever since I've been in the house and I never give it much thought.  I have no idea why it's there; its only function seems to be to accumulate leaves in the autumn (though there are some sorry sedums growing between the fence and the house; perhaps the fence was put in place to keep deer away from the sedums).

In any case, I made two more trips to carry the rest of the groceries inside, but the snake didn't move, so I went to investigate.  Upon closer inspection, this is what I found:

The snake had made its way through one of the small holes in the mesh fence, but its body was too big to go all the way through; it was snared.

I went to my toolbox, got my wire snips and extricated the 2-foot-long serpent, but not before it bathed my hands in foul-smelling musk.   Ingrate...!

(The images aren't great, but they were done quickly so that I could extricate the snake as quickly as possible.)