MEMORIAL DAY 2008

EXCELSIOR!

I was re-reading one of my Mary Stuart stories "Airs Above the Ground" and the heroine said, "Whither thou goest, I will follow. Excelsior." That got me laughing and thinking about P-Doobie with hand puppets quoting Longfellow. I looked up "Excelsior" on Wikipedia and found the poem and thought we should all read it again!

Excelsior!

A. BIG. DAMN. SNAKE ! !

This evening when I went down to the barn to feed the horses, this is what I saw trying to hide under a hay bale:




After I looked at it...a bull snake (I checked the tail)...I ran to the house to get Jack and show it to him. When we got back down there, there was another one. They were both about the same size...BIG! Maybe four feet long. He (she?)was going across the opening in the front of the barn. Before that, I scared it and it went into the stall where Barney was eating and Barney got scared. He jumped around and so the snake got scared and came out and went into the stall next door. I took three great pictures of it, but had the lens cap on, so they really weren't so great!



I tried to get a close-up, but it moved away too fast.



...and ended up going under a pile of lumber in one of the stalls.

I'm wondering if I interrupted a mating ritual...