a beautiful weekend.

1. Mudd has turned into quite the little seeing eye dog. He spots animals in the grass on a regular basis and Friday was no exception. We were taking a leisurely walk in tick infested grass when I noticed the dog pawing at a patch of earth. I walked over to the area and spied a scaled tail. I tugged on it and a ridiculously long garter snake started to unwind from the grass. I grabbed the beast behind the neck and went to grab my camera for a few shots. After our photo session she was released at the same spot we found her.
2. We tried to find an arrowhead this weekend. Not successful. But the field we were in had a lot of beautiful flint chips. Pink, red, grey, black, orange...all shiny and sharp as glass. Where you find flint chips there is a chance you'll find an arrowhead. So, it was worth a shot. At least the rocks look pretty.
3. It was a froggy weekend. All my amphibious friends have come out to enjoy an early spring. We took Mudd to the pond to Frolic. that clever dog has figured out that if he walks along the edge of the pond and smashes algae...frogs will jump out. Once the frogs jump out of the algae Mudd chases them along the pond's edge. It was pretty darn cute. What wasn't cute, though? The ubiquitous TICKS!!! We headed back to the truck after our pond jaunt and checked the dog for ticks. HE HAD THREE! I began to freak out and began to check myself, I had ticks crawling up my pants! I picked them off and thought I was in the clear. Nope. We begin the drive home, I let out a huge SCREAM because there was a tick crawling up my arm. I looked at my pant legs and there were two more! The ticks crawled off the dog and onto me. Needless to say, I hopped out of the truck, screamed, and flailed about for awhile. Think the story is over?...nope. I went to bed that night and picked two more ticks off of Mudd. TERRIBLE!

a snake tail.

UPDATE! : I've been told that this is not a young bull snake but is an adult brown snake. I've got some smart friends. nov.2

The dog and I have been taking a lot of walks. Every time there's a walk there's an adventure. Saturday, Mudd's ears perked up and he began to paw at dry grass. Of course, this perked my human interest and I bent over to separate the grass blades and maybe figure out what the dog was looking at.
This is what I found. But it's kind of an odd story. The snake was small, about seven inches long, maybe 9. I reached down to pull the snake off the grass and had a hell of a time trying to get it to release it's grip. A small snake couldn't hold on that strong, right?

I was partially correct. I finally got the snake off the grass and it was super heavy. I looked at the bottom of the snake and a small grey mammal was voraciously gnawing, biting, shaking, and HANGING from the snakes tail. It was a shrew and it was trying to eat the snake! Wow. Eventually the shrew released it's death grip and disappeared into the tall grass. I stood there, befuddled.

I shook off the shock, photographed the snake and returned it to the wild.

an interesting optical illusion.

I managed to catch a pretty great optical illusion on camera.