Last week I found a snakeskin in our flower garden, the same garden with our small lily pond, which happens to have a baby frog. Snakes have gone for my resident frogs before, so I was concerned about the snake, not for myself, but for my frogs – I have others in our new goldfish pond.
Discarded snakeskins are the result of molting, which occurs regularly in snakes. When the old skin is outgrown, they shed. Snakes will rub against rough surfaces to shed their skin. A shed skin is much longer than the snake that shed it, as the skin covers the top and bottom of each scale. If the skin is shed intact, each scale is unwrapped on the top and bottom side of the scale which almost doubles the length of the shed skin.
This wasn’t a very large snakeskin, maybe 18 or 20 inches, which led me to believe it wasn’t the large black snake we saw behind our shed a few weeks ago. I don’t think black snakes rummage around in the water, but rather prowl for rodents on dry ground. But if this was a water snake, my frogs would be in trouble.
Two mornings later, there were signs of a mighty struggle in this same flower garden. Our water fountain had been over-turned and several feet of a light wire trellis had been uprooted. What would do that?
My first thought was a bear, there had been one seen not a mile from our house. But a bear would have headed for our bird feeders, trash cans and suet bars. So, it wasn’t a bear.
Then I remembered the snakeskin and came to this conclusion about the mysterious scuffle. I believe that either a raccoon or possibly a fox was taking a late night stroll through our yard and got a whiff of, or saw, Mr. Snake. The snake slithered among our peonies to hide, but the predator was not deterred. He chased down the snake, uprooting the light fence and knocked over the water fountain. And I believe he caught the snake and enjoyed a late night dinner. At least I hope so. We haven’t seen Mr. Snake – or any of his skins – since then and our small frog is still in the pond.
