We have recently found a few snakeskins in our yard, so that meant there were snakes around. But until this week, we had not seen any.
Yesterday, I heard Nancy shrieking outside, and that meant she had found the snakes. She wasn’t afraid of the snakes per se, they were harmless garter snakes, but she feared they might get our frogs and there were now two of the slimy critters in our small fishpond where there were also frogs. I went running for a hoe (for decapitation) while she dunked a rake in the 35-gallon tank, trying to get the snakes to surface. Finally, she saw that one did and slithered off. We then drained the tank and found no more snakes, so apparently, both had slipped away during the scuffle. It was quite an ordeal.
While Nancy was refilling the pond, I headed for Lowe’s and some snake repellent. The stuff is lethal to fish so we were careful to keep it away from the water and just put it around the perimeter of our ponds. It smells, by the way, like mothballs on steroids. I don’t know why anything would ever get close to it. The smell was so strong that we are hoping that it won’t make our frogs pack their bags and move on.
Speaking of frogs, a leopard frog showed up the day after it rained this week. Don’t know where he came from, he just showed up on the side of the small lily pond. Then, Nancy stumbled onto another leopard frog in the front yard, a little smaller.
Leopard frogs are apparently quite the travelers and I suppose the rain stirred them up, but we don’t have a creek or a stream or a lake within a half-mile, so who knows?
We have bullfrogs in our goldfish pond, but they came from the tadpoles we bought at Springdale Gardens. As far as I can tell, they are still there, hiding among the water lettuce and hyacinths. The leopard frogs are merely transients.
Unlike the green bullfrogs, Southern leopard fogs are usually brownish and have splotches on their backs and sides that resemble leopards spots – thus, their name.
Leopard frogs are aggressive predators and will eat most anything that can fit in their mouths. The snakes, also aggressive, had their eyes set on our new arrival, but he escaped the pond and scurried under some nearby rocks. We’re hoping he will return while the snakes find a new yard in which to prowl.