My plantings above this rock wall have gotten weedier and weedier ever since I discovered a copperhead amidst them. It had been weeks since we last saw it and I'd begun to hope that it had died of gunshot wounds after disappearing into a crevice.
Encouraged by this hope and invigorated by the cooler weather, I took my hoe and went to attack the weeds. My procedure was to poke around with the hoe in the area I planned to weed, keeping an eye out for any slithery movement and then, after seeing none, to plunge in and pull weeds.
After about a half an hour of cautious weeding, I was nearing the area where the copperhead was last seen. Poke, poke--SONOFAGUN!!!-- there it was, heading for the same place it disappeared last time.
Reader, I took my hoe and hacked the poor critter to death, kinda like that woman in the BC comics. I really felt bad about it--but that's just too close to the house for comfort.
Of course, there may be more. Cautious weeding will continue.
For those of you following the saga of the chicken tractor -- two updates. John added upstairs ventilation as the weather is so warm. These plywood and chicken wire panels replace the solid ones of the original design (which, being English, didn't have to worry about the kind of heat we're having.) It also lets a bit of light into the upstairs which we had hoped would encourage the chicks to put themselves to bed when dusk came, as is (or should be) their natural roosting behavior.
Only it didn't. They didn't. We tried putting them up there several times after dark but it was always the same -- the next night they would just pile up in a heap on the grass at one end of the tractor. So we decided to put three of the older hens in the tractor and the babies in the old chicken coop. (Susan B. had worried about the chickens having room to move and I can say that three full grown hens seem just fine. I think we could add one or two more -- but probably not the rooster because he's so tall.)
The plan is to keep these three girls on the garden tier till they scratch down to bare dirt. We'll see how long it takes them to 'till' up the dirt -- then we'll move the tractor.
The biddies, meanwhile, are having a ball exploring the chicken yard. But last night they just piled up in a heap outside and we had to go down and put them in the chicken house.
I hope they get the hang of this pretty soon.
But wait . . . there's more. Down in the garden this morning, after picking beans and corn, I decided to pull a few weeds out of the asparagus bed. Halfway through, I got to a very overgrown bit where morning glory vines were making a jungle. I stuck my hand into the midst of the the vines and leaves, ready to pull them up, and out shot a snake. I leaped backward, letting out the sort of straight-from-the-gut primal scream that it would probably take thousands of dollars and years of therapy to achieve.
It was a good-sized copperhead on top of the rock wall, lying there and staring at me. If I'd had a hoe, I would have tried to kill him -- I'd have felt bad about it, especially since he had been kind enough not to bite me, but I would much prefer no copperheads in the garden.
But since I didn't have a hoe, I reached for my camera. Unfortunately, as soon as I did that, the snake slid back into the morning glory jungle. Morning glories which, I suspect, are going to be left to achieve their full potential.
