To return to the subject of this post, we have snake(s) in / visiting our garden. The photograph on the left shows it in the planter, from where it escaped and I lost it. Investigation suggest it is a Japanese Rat Snake, so called because its preferred diet it rat. In Japanese it is called Ao-Daishou. At first I understood this is a venomous snake, but now I understand that it is non-venomous. The snake comes in different colours, here it is a dark, slate blue colour, and is an excellent climber. It climbs trees to eat birds and birds eggs with ease, indeed I have seen this perched on the window frame of a house, and my wife saw one like that too. I took this photo with a handy digital camera and it is not very good at all, but it does show the snake is somewhere about a metre in length, the creatures usually grow to 1.1 - 2 metres long.
The important thing is that it is non-venomous. Indeed, it seems that farmers, other than chicken farmers, welcome these snakes as rat controllers. But my neighbour, who is a farmer asked me if I had killed the snake and advised that I did if I saw it again. The one on the left I saw on 6 June, about two weeks later, late afternoon / early evening I was weeding around the same are when I heard a dull thump behind me, I looked but saw nothing. Later I was walking and heard the same dull thump and saw the snake winding its way down the side of a wall, so expect the snake had launched itself off of the wall and onto the dirt. The snake than made as if it was to climb up the wall again, but did not. My efforts to eradicate it failed, probably due to nervousness, and the snake slithered away through the bushes and onward to where I do not know. I am now, knowing more about this snake, less apprehensive about it or its friends visiting the garden, but would prefer not to meet it unexpectedly sitting in a corner...
