Foreign Exchange Program

I had a little garden snake. She was brown with a sienna stripe highlighted by two creamy stripes down her back. She was sorta pretty in a snaky kind of way and we got along. Mostly she hung out in the artichokes. Except for those couple of times she surprised me while picking bush beans and strawberries. Sometimes a garden snake can be very unnerving.

Our foreign exchange program began with her.

One day she up and decided she was tired of the coast and wanted to check out the mountains. She hitched a ride in the engine of our truck. She almost changed her mind halfway through (and almost caused a wreck - I told you garden snakes can be unnerving!), but after checking out the hood, decided she'd stick with the original plan and headed back down into the engine.

Life is rougher in the mountains. She now has to deal with snow and rattlers and who knows what-all. But I hear the men are more rugged and I KNOW the bugs are more plentiful. She may think it was a good change of pace. I hope she's ok.

Now we get to the more sinister "exchange" part of this program. A week or so later, a mountain tree squirrel decides to check out the coast. Again in the truck engine. Except he didn't squirrel around during the trip.

There aren't any tree squirrels here in town. No ground squirrels either. Our mountain tree squirrel decided he'd hit the jackpot and took up residence in the chicken feeder.  He resisted efforts to trap him. He'd sit in the feeder or on top of the chicken coop and chatter at us and at the chickens and stuff his face. The chickens hated him.  I didn't care for him much either. I don't speak squirrel, but I used to understand a little. Though he had a strange dialect I think he was saying, "Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, naaaaaaah!" Hubby took that as a challenge and shot him.

And that was the end of the exchange experience. Or was it? A couple of weeks later Hubby is in the mountains and the truck starts running rough. He limps it to town to find that several hundred dollars worth of wiring has been chewed. The prints in the dust on the engine point to the squirrel mafia. I don't think we're ever gonna see our snake again. That's all I have to say about that. I think I've already said too much.