Cottage Wildlife ....

..The Cute and the Not SO Cute. (see extra!) ... 

It is interesting how we categorize animals that way and how that affects our attitudes toward them. Today's experience prompted me to give some thought to that....

A big part of cottage life is the local "flora and fauna"... A lot of my time is spent admiring the wildflowers, water lilies, and fungi and watching the birds, especially the loons, the mink, the beavers, the deer, the bears and of course the shenanigans of our pet chipmunks......but this afternoon, a new visitor made an appearance...a snake.  I admit that I am hoping said snake does not intend to take up permanent residence here, but if he does, I will have to watch my step as I prowl around through the blueberry bushes and grass...looking for blips! 

Of course there are snakes here...always have been....fox snakes, water snakes, grass snakes and the most famous of them - the  Massasauga Rattlesnake whose status is "threatened" and which is therefore a protected species... but we seldom have snake encounters! 

Today my brother had come to have dinner with us and we were all sitting on the dock, when he spied a very large snake coming out of the water and trying to climb the steep rock on the shore behind us...(extra) 

Great excitement ensued! Cameras and binoculars came out to get a closer look..and once the rather unwelcome visitor - the snake, not my brother - had managed to get along the shoreline to a safe hiding place in a pile of brush, we retreated to the screened-in porch to examine the photos and try to identify the snake from the cottage wildlife reference book and, of course the internet.

 The markings on the snake were so similar to that of the Massasauga rattler - the only venomous snake in this area -  that we wanted to be sure it was not one of those. Consensus was that it is an Eastern Milk Snake, identified by the  distinguishing features of the markings on its head....non-venomous and therefore harmless. 

Still, venomous or not, all my life I have had an aversion to snakes. Spiders do not bother me, lizards do not bother me...but snakes give me the creeps...How fair is that? I have often wondered why I feel that way..like, did something happen in my early years to instil this fear? I can remember some possible triggers, but the snake itself had nothing to do with them! It was usually the response of others or me being startled by a perfectly innocent snake doing its thing... 

Whatever, despite my discomfort being around this snake, it was an interesting highlight in my day..Tomorrow though, I will try to blip something less "exciting"...perhaps in the flora category?