animals in your life

[billy rubin]

springtime again

took the five surviving hives and divided the three strongest into 10 nucs. said to self, those others are still too puny to swarm. theres plenty of time.

anyway, as usual, i was wrong, and this is the third to swarm in the last week and i have no time to get ahead of them:

so im catching my bees out of bushes and trying to get em into boxes before they fly away. this one was awkward, right up in an elm and i couldnt get em all in a box and couldnt shake the tree. messed with em until they got pissed enough to start stinging me and then i said said fuggit

so i went from one hive last spring to eleven or so now. i did not buy queens this time around, just letting the bees raise their own queens as im not in a hurry to get productivity. cant do that indefinietely, as inbred bees get mean after a few generations, and im talking about seriously mean. i dont mind getting stung a bit, but ive worked with inbred bees so mean they chased me into the alfalfa and made me roll in it. that morning i shook 14 dead bees out of one boot. didnt take the other one off.

[billy rubin]

had to dig out the pressure tank for the well yesterday. not having water is a drag out here. had to haul water on the one ton for years here evrry summer, so i pay attentikn to the well operation.

but anyway, i flipped a piece of plywood next to the well and grabbed this beautiful lampropeltis, eastern milk snake they call em. not big, just about three feet, and very gentle.





mostly we see rat snakes here, elaphe they used to be, and this is the first lampropeltis ive caught.

[Dark Lightning]

Snake chili! 

[hermes2015]

What a gorgeous snake. Thank you for being so gentle with it.

[billy rubin]

they are really elegant snakes. lampropeltis triangulum. i remember them from many years ago in oklahoma, iirc. milk snakes, king snakes, lots of common names which i cant keep track of. lampropeltis is good enough for me.





the pattern is pretty constant, but there is great variety in how dark or light each of the parts is. but consistently theres a dark stripe outlined in black, against a light background. and some have bright red stripings.





dont see em a lot in daytime, unlike the rat snakes, which are happily unafraid of anything. theyre constrictors. currently there are 24 subspecies in various places, named for their different colours. theyll eat mice and frogs and lizards and other snakes.

i wish they were more common. the young ones are gorgeous, bright red stripes. i found one on the floor of a fast food place-- a mcdonalds-- a few years ago. the width of a pencil and about as long. took it out to th eweeds.

we have a a decent variety of snakes here but you mostly have to go looking for them to catch them out.

[billy rubin]

today i was emptying a garbage compactor in west virginia, and there was an old goose decoy stuck down by the chain link fence. then i looked again and the decoy was looking back at me.







grus canadensis. pretty common. this one is late with the eggs, there were five under him/her (theyre monomorphic and mate for life). normally the eggs are out in february, and here it is walpurgisnacht already.