New snake activity! Plus a surprise bonus, Jason the famous alligator hunter & his buds, Steve and Justin (partners in crime is more like it!) Did you know native Texan (giant) Red Ants are really good for the environment? Did you know they like to eat snakes? Yep, they do.

If you have to kill a snake, or if you happen across an already dead snake, put it's body on an ant hill. I'm not talking about fire ants; I'm talking about good 'ole native giant red ants.
If a buzzard doesn't fly in and nab the snake (which they sometimes do), the red ants will strip the snake right down to the skeleton. It usually only takes them about a day to clean the snake. The meat of the snake is carried down into the mound to feed the queen and "ant babies". Isn't that totally cool?

By the way, I enjoy snuffing out fire ants. I take great joy in killing as many of the evil little devils as I can. It is very good therapy - killing fire ants, that is.

Want to know how I do it? Heee Hee Heeee!
I feed them corn meal. Just sprinkle it around their mound and they'll come a-runnin' for it! They eat it up! They take it down into their mound and feed it to THEIR queen and babies. Then they get a tummy ache and die, die DIE! Know why? They CAN'T DIGEST corn meal! Hee Hee Heeeee!

After I feed corn meal to a mound of fire ants, I usually feel so good I go "snatchy". That's what we call it when we get in the mood to make sunsnatchers - like for example I like making cowboy boot sunsnatchers. These boots are made for stompin'! (Not really).

I know you are wondering how we coined the phrase "snatchy". Here's what happened: we had a neighbor that moved from the big city out to the country. Our neighbor had a lot of free time on her hands. She was very curious about our flock of guinea hens. She had a million questions about them and the main thing she wanted to know was WHY did we keep those guinea hens. So we explained that even though they are sometimes loud and fussy, they were good at chasing away snakes and were also as good as a guard dog when strangers approached (because of the ear piercing screams they make when someone or something unfamiliar comes upon the scene). Then Ms. Neighbor decided to get her own flock - ordered right out of a poultry catalog and mailed directly to the US Post Office. She was so excited when they arrived. She had twenty baby guineas living under a light in her workshop until they became fully feathered. Then, one day Ms. Neighbor climbed the fence in the back forty and moseyed on over to the barn where I was mucking stalls.

In the runway of the barn was a female guinea hen all hunkered down, squatting over a clutch of eggs. Ms. Neighbor asked me "why was that hen huddled there in the corner of the runway like that?" And I replied that the hen was sitting on a nest of eggs, trying to hatch babies.

Ms. N says to me "is that what you call it"? And of course, I said YES. (She was setting me up). . .

When suddenly she waves her arms in the air and she says to me: "NO! That hen is going BROODY!" I have a book about guinea hens and it describes this EXACT behavior as GOING BROODY!"

Well, when I told Nita Sue about my conversation with our neighbor, we both got really tickled. Now, I cannot say "going broody" without snorting back a giggle.

This place out here sure is a wonderful place to be except for certain forms of wildlife. Scorpions, tarantulas, copperheads, coyotes and mountain lions are just a few that come to mind. I have a dear friend that after hearing a few stories and then visiting to see for herself has decided she'll only visit after a hard freeze (when lots of critters have hibernated).

Recently, we noticed egg production was almost at a stand-still AGAIN. We didn't see a thing but Nita was convinced there was another chicken snake. Finally, after two weeks or so of looking for it, she figured the snake's routine. At night he slithered down the chicken house wall and into the nesting boxes. He fed well, eating most all of the eggs every night. Then, before daylight, he would climb back up the wall to rest inside a barn swallow nest (a family of birds that most probably were one of his late-night snacks).

The snake was invisible during the day. It was Nita's intuition that solved the puzzle. She (of course) had me to stand inside the chicken house and bang on the wall with a hoe. She stood back out in the yard to see if my actions roused the snake. Finally, it did. He lazily sat up and peered over the edge from the top of the chicken shed, just under the roof.

About that time my phone rings. It's my nephew Jason. He says "Hey Aunt Lisa, what are you doin'?" Well, luckily it was Jason's day off from work, so he grabs his little boy Miller and here they come!

About an hour later Jason has run the snake down to the floor of the hen house. Then, he stunned me by actually grabbing the tail of the snake (which by the way was about 5 or 6 feet long) while using a garden hoe to keep the snake's head down preventing him from striking. Jason drags the snake out into the yard and mean while I've run to get my 410 rifle. Jason yells "shoot him Aunt Lisa!" So I'm only two feet away from it; I take aim, pull the trigger and BOOM! I miss it.

Long story short, we get it killed - so we are finally back in the egg business again. All the while Jason was getting the snake for us, Nita and Miller are petting chickens. Did I mention a hen's feathers feel like velvet? Miller LOVES petting chickens.

Then, Dad Jason takes Miller over to see the happy ants scurrying around their wonderful bounty!
Nature and the world around us is a fascinating thing! What's that old saying? "Always take time to smell the roses". I couldn't agree more!

The armadillo you see was rescued from the dog yard. Dogs tend to pick on armadillos. He's going the other way now!