A Snake Saves the Day

We have a gopher in the garden. He has been creating tunnels under our peas and destroying them one by one. The battle between Glenn and the gopher has been intense this week. One could find Glenn in the garden digging up Gopher holes, filling in gopher holes, putting road flare smoke into holes, and even setting our cat over a hole. The gopher has won every battle by digging new tunnels, avoiding the smoke and laughing at our inept cat.

Then this beautiful gopher snake came into our lives. My sister and her family accidently picked up the snake (it climbed under their car and hid for a week) while visiting the Carrizo Plain. My sister gave this wonderful gift to Glenn after she learned of his gopher problems.


Here is a picture of my mom holding the snake. She was the only one brave enough to touch the snake so I could photograph him. I made her wear our bee gloves.

We put the hungry snake into the gopher's most recent hole. So far the snake appears to be winning. We have not lost any vegetables to the gopher in the last twenty four hours. We did, however, lose some trees to deer and have a new bug eating our artichoke plant. And the battle continues....